EASLEY — As growth occurs in Easley, all eyes have been on the schools and how the development furor has impacted the classroom.

The focus was further intensified at a recent city council meeting when Ward 3 representative Pat Webb mentioned there would only be 67 more children in Pickens County by 2027 as she addressed the 20 annexations and developments the city has recently approved. In looking at the actual data and in speaking to school officials, the numbers paint a different picture for Easley.

The School District of Pickens County has a Day 10 Enrollment Chart that spans the last three years showing the overall District down -83 students year over year. However, if one were to delve further, there are contradictory trends for the City of Easley. The South Carolina Department of Education puts out a SC School Report Card, with numbers going as far back as 2017-18. Charts 1 and 2 show that indeed while Pickens County numbers are somewhat flat for the last three years, the City of Easley is actually on a steady growth trajectory.

In fact, Easley High School, while having 34 fewer students than last year according to the 10 Day Enrollment chart, has seen somewhat consistent increases since 2018-19 as depicted in Chart 3. Easley High School has 238 more students this year than 2018-19 (+15% growth) and Easley elementary schools have 189 more students than 20-21 (7% growth).

McKissick Academy has seen the most persistent accumulation of students among elementary schools (with a dip during COVID-19 years) which is not surprising given it’s transformation over the years from a traditional school to a theme-based magnet school that is heavily focused on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education.

To further illustrate, the SDPC recently put out a 20-year track that showed enrollment by high school attendance area across the school district. Here, the numbers revealed attendance in Clemson and Easley is increasing in size (Clemson +442 and Easley +315), while Liberty and Pickens attendance is declining (Liberty -89 and Pickens -1089). The chart showed there were 421 fewer students overall.

Darian Byrd, Chief Communications Officer for the School District of Pickens County, said the report that Pat Webb referenced was from a demographer report from January 2021 based on 2010 Census data.

“Live data proves that report is inaccurate,” Byrd said. “We see a definite trend that people are moving to the 123 corridor. It’s an interesting trend that demographers could not predict. COVID has created an unpredictable path of migration. That said, we are planning for growth in the Easley and Clemson area. We are looking at a second school for those areas, down the road, looking to take a grade out of each of the schools and create another school which would give space to all of them.”

Byrd also referenced a report the South Carolina Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office put out in May of this year that showed Pickens County as one of the top three counties for projected population growth for the Age 0-17 demographic. The other two counties were Spartanburg and Berkeley, all of which are near the growing areas of Greenville and Charleston. (See Chart 6) “We are using current data to make better decisions,” said Byrd.

In looking to track homeschooling, Byrd said the county does not track the numbers of homeschooled children annually in the same manner. This year, SDPC shows 1,230 being homeschooled in Pickens County, but does not have the numbers for previous years or a track of where the students live in the county.

Youth Leadership Academy had no comment for this article.

The Lakes & Bridges Charter School has a cap of 200 as part of their charter.