Without an expansion that has been on hold, Alcoa Intermediate School will be out of space by the 2023-24 school year.

“We need to start moving dirt the first of May or we’re not going to have space for kids in a couple of years,” Alcoa City Schools Director Becky Stone told City Manager Mark Johnson earlier this month.

With an estimated capacity of 445 students, AIS already has 437.

The school’s expansion and renovation plan went to bid in April 2019, coming in at $22.5 million, but has been on hold since Johnson said the city could not issue a bond for the project because funding was not available.

Within the next two years, Alcoa is expecting more students from the Springbrook Farm and Bungalow School developments, as well as an annexation along Topside Road that is expected to bring 200 apartments.

AIS already is using two classrooms that are part of Alcoa Middle School.

Stone told the Alcoa Board of Education Jan. 19 that she met with Johnson the week prior and plans another meeting in late February to discuss a timeline for the AIS project, which she estimates will take about two years.

Stone said she thought Johnson was speaking “tongue in cheek” when he suggested bringing in portable classrooms during the meeting. “I said, ‘Well, I don’t think the citizens of Alcoa would like that very much,’” she said with a laugh. “And we definitely don’t want that.”

“I don’t even have closets to make into classrooms,” she told the school board. “We are busting at the seams,” and that’s just with resident students.

Aside from recent funding for computers, the city of Alcoa’s contribution to schools has remained at $4.02 million since 2007.

In the interim, enrollment has risen by more than 500 students. While more students mean more state and local funding, Alcoa has had fewer tuition students in recent years, who both help offset costs and raise test scores.

Currently tuition students make up 15.55% of ACS enrollment, down from 20.83% in 2016 and 27.23% in 2010.

Stone told The Daily Times in an email last week that the district can’t take new tuition students at the elementary intermediate and middle level, which then also hurts the high school. For some families one sibling may be able to enroll in the high school but there is no room for a younger sister or brother.

In 2018, ACS raised tuition to $1,000 a year, but city of Alcoa employees, including those who work for the school district, pay only half that amount.

“We’re hanging on, but it needs to get better, and honestly, we need some help from our city,” Stone told the board.