Roanoke City Public Schools presents Phase 1 boundary plan to relieve overcrowding at Preston Park and Monterey

Chris Perkins, the district’s chief operations officer, presented a phased boundary‑study recommendation the board will consider on May 26, saying the immediate goal is to open Preston Park on time this summer and ease overcrowding at Monterey and other neighborhood elementary schools.

"Preston Park is coming online in August, as I just said," Perkins said, and the district’s first phase would target Preston Park, Monterey, Fallon Park, Lincoln Terrace and Round Hill to balance enrollment and create better feeder patterns. Perkins said the district’s consultants at Futurethink used a moderate projection and recommended aiming for 85–90% functional capacity to allow room for program expansion and services.

Perkins outlined projected movements: about 124 students transitioning into Preston Park for a net increase of roughly 113, and a net decrease of about 89 students at Monterey. He cautioned that all figures are projections and that special transfers and programmatic transfers would be handled case‑by‑case.

"Less than 10%, approximately 9% of those students, will move," Perkins said, describing the change as a limited reassignment across just over 2,600 students in the five schools. He said the district will provide orientation events, counseling supports and direct parent notification if the board approves the recommendation.

Board members pressed for detail on feeder patterns, middle‑school capacity and how families would be notified. Perkins and HR staff said feeders to middle schools would not change in the first step, that most middle schools remain below functional capacity, and that parents would be notified by mail, email, robocall and an attendance‑locator tool once GIS