Junior high space needed

Just days after city voters rejected plans to build a new high school, district officials learned it's only a matter of time before they'll need a new middle school.

Enrollment projections released in November show that not only will the newly opened West Hill Middle School likely have to relocate to a bigger space next fall to accommodate upward of 100 additional students, but the district will also have to find a place for a fourth middle school over the next decade for an influx of about 425 students.

The district eventually sold the landmark building, leery of maintenance costs and convinced that families who chose charter schools wouldn't be coming back.

"Look at what happened with the Brighter Choice schools," said school board President Ginnie Farrell, referring to the 2015 closure of two Albany charter schools.

The rise and fall of charter schools in Albany has made long-term facilities planning a challenge for the school district, which now finds itself needing space it offloaded during the charter school boom.

Some of the growth is from those old charter school students re-entering the public fold, and some is from a growing immigrant and refugee population.

If it's not available next year, the district would relocate the Alternative Learning Center to the former Harriett Gibbons High School on Watervliet Avenue, and the district's central registration and administrative offices currently housed at Harriett Gibbons would move to the Sunshine Building in Lincoln Park.

Albany is a particularly difficult place to forecast enrollment, said Robert Hendriks, executive director of the Long Island-based Educational Legacy Planning Group, which is heading the grade configuration study for the district.