How crowded are middle schools in Lexington? 1,000 kids use portable classrooms.

Most Fayette County middle schools are at or above their capacity of students. More simply put, they are overcrowded.

The school board on Monday decided with a 3-2 vote to postpone building a new middle school in the rapidly growing Hamburg area after estimated costs rose 49 percent to $70. 5 million.

Board members Stephanie Spires and Tom Jones were against postponing the project because Lexington middle schools are overcrowded and the area around Hamburg continues to grow. At meetings on Monday and Nov. 8, school district staff provided data that explained the need for a new middle school.

Four of 11 middle schools -- Hayes, Jessie Clark, Leestown and Winburn -- are over 100 percent capacity, district middle school director Tracy Bruno said.

“The district’s decision to build a middle school in the first place was a good one,” board member Tom Jones said at the Nov. 8 meeting. “The additional capacity was needed. Nothing has changed since then. If anything , there’s even greater reason for more middle school capacity.”

E.J Hayes has a capacity of 892 but currently has 1,094 students. Jessie Clark has a capacity of 893 and currently has 1,091 students. Leestown , with 999 students, has a capacity of 834. Winburn has a capacity of 773 and has 821 students.

Beaumont Middle is at 92 percent capacity; Bryan Station Middle and Crawford are at 97 percent capacity; Morton and Southern Middle are at 98 percent capacity.

Overcrowding is not an issue at Tates Creek Middle School, at 85 percent capacity and Lexington Traditional Magnet Middle -- commonly known as LTMS -- at 41 percent capacity.

Because of growth in neighborhoods, seven of 11 middle schools are using portable classrooms, district officials said.

The number of sixth through eighth graders in the Leestown Middle School area is projected to grow by 13.2 percent by 2024-2025. The area around Crawford is expected to see 43 percent growth of students of middle school age.

The proposed new middle school would be located between Hayes and Crawford and with a student enrollment of 1,200, would relieve some of the overcrowding, Bruno said. There are expected to be 1,300 to 1,400 middle school students in that area by 2024-2025, up from 1, 100.

On Monday, district chief operating officer Myron Thompson said roughly five percent of the district’s students, or 2,225, are currently in portable classrooms at a cost of about $616,000 annually.

In middle schools specifically, 1,000 out of 8,939 middle school students are using portable classrooms.

In recent bids for new Kentucky schools, costs are increasing, Thompson said. But the Polo Club middle school is the largest bid to date, he said.

If the board had decided to move forward with the middle school on Monday, construction could have started in January. Redistricting would have started in spring 2022.

With the project postponed, middle schools may still be redistricted.

In addition, a short term solution is that some students at Leestown Middle could voluntarily move to LTMS and students at Jessie Clark voluntarily move to Beaumont.

Some empty space at LTMS could be repurposed for new programs.

It’s also possible that out-of-district students would no longer be able to attend Leestown’s popular pre-engineering program.