The student population of Lightridge High School was 958 the year it opened. Today there are over 1,900 students at Lightridge. As more communities have been built there has been a steady growth of students attending schools in the eastern part of Loudoun County, especially in the Dulles South area.
Compared to other schools in the county, Lightridge has a large square footage which allows for a large student population to be served.
“In terms of hallways [students] might notice there are more kids, but our hallways are big enough to deal with it right now,” said Jermey Cortash, an assistant principal at Lightridge.
While there could be complications in the future as the student population grows, as of now Cortash sees it as a positive.
“Our student body is so active, it really entices others to get involved. If you look prominently at the percentage of kids that participate in activities it’s high. Over 80% of our kids participate in something,” said Cortash.
However, some things undoubtedly get impacted with a larger student population. Class sizes increase, lunch shifts become more crowded, course selection becomes more competitive, and so does the competition to make a sports team.
“There will always be five players on a basketball team, and there will only be so many that are selected to on the basketball team. The larger the school is, the more overcrowded, certainly the competition to make a sports team may be greater,” explained Beverly Tate the Director of Planning and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Services for Loudoun County Public Schools.
Another problem that schools with a large student population face is traffic. This led to the Department of Planning and GIS services to create the Congestion Must Go campaign aimed at getting students to travel to school in ways other than a car.
The Department of Planning and GIS Services is currently working on the budget which will dictate how many teachers, additions, and modules are needed in order to serve the students of Loudoun County Public Schools. Modules are trailers that are located outside the school building that replace classrooms. Changing the boundaries of the attendance zones for a school is another option that the department has when dealing with overcrowding.
“Maybe we don’t need to put an addition or build a new school if we have capacity at adjacent schools that we know will be available for years,” Tate said.
Almost everything the Department of Planning and GIS services does is based on projected enrollments of the student population. The more accurate numbers, the better the department will be able to serve the county.
“We had projected 1,926 students for Lightridge High School on September 29th… as of today you all had 1,926. So that’s a rarity that we hit it spot on, and we were pretty thrilled,” Tate said.
In the fall of 2028 a new High School, referred to as HS-14 is going to be opened. Ideally this will help solve the problem of potential overcrowding for all the schools in the Dulles South area. Watson Mountain Middle School and HS-14 will become a school cluster similar to Willard Middle School and Lightridge.
“We will in all likelihood be looking at the current Lightridge attendance zone, to see if we need to move some of those middle and high school students that are in the current attendance area to the new school to provide relief,” said Tate.
