No two years of planning at Bull Run Middle School are ever the same for principal William Bixby.

The 7-year-old school started in 2002 with a roster of about 800 students, which roughly 56 percent of the 1,414 names of sixth, seventh and eighth graders there now.

Capacity of the school is 1,233. Four out of the last five years, BRMS has operated above that threshold, peaking in the 2006-07 school year with 1,700 students.

As new middle schools open in the western Prince William County area, overcrowding is really only temporarily mitigated. Once the county's 16th middle school opens at Silver Lake, which is slated to be in 2012, the school can expect some more relief.

However, the population increase at Bull Run has brought a noticeable side effect: the student demographics have dramatically shifted, exposing students to a much more ethnically and culturally diverse set of classmates.

"I think with every generation, the kids see the kids as kids," Bixby said. "They don't see color the way my parent's generation [did]."

Currently, the school is about 50 percent white, meaning roughly half the school populace is not white. According to numbers provided by Bixby, Asian, Hispanic and black ethnic groups each make up about somewhere near 15 percent of the school while between 5 and 8 percent of students are listed as "unspecified" with regard to race.

Oddly enough though, there has not been a significant increase in English as a Second Language Students at Bull Run in terms of percentage, which Bixby called "relatively stable".

"People are surprised that we're 50 percent white," said Bixby, who has been working with the PWC school system since 1988 and was a former assistant principal at racially-diverse Stonewall Jackson High School in Manassas.

Moving around

Herding kids from one class to the next in an overcrowded school can be quite a task for the school faculty. So there have been a few changes, from infrastructure to scheduling, to help accommodate that.

The biggest request made by Bixby to the county was for a separate structure outside that could be used for classrooms. Once "Eagle Island" opened in the school's fourth year, that brought in another 10 classrooms, three of which are still used.

He requested the building in the 2004-05 school year and it arrived by December of that year, when the school had 1,500 students. One year later, it reached 1,700.

Bull Run also has six lunch periods, essentially amounting to two for each grade level. Core class sizes are consistently around 30, with physical education being closer to 40.

Foreclosures

While guidance councilors are nothing new to schools, some the reasons why students are seeing them has changed, Bixby said. The foreclosure rate in the county led the country just last year, which in turn affected the kids that have no control over that situation.

"We see a slight increase in free and reduced lunch," said Bixby.

Recently, the school staff has reached out to a few down-trodden parents to help them with supplying basic needs like food.

Bixby did not have exact figures for how many parents have come in seeking help. He did say, however, that those parents reach out to the school because "we see their kids five days a week."

Discipline

A rise in the school population could mean that there would be a greater number or even percentage of kids acting out in the public school. That has not been the case at Bull Run, however, according to numbers provided by the principal.

"We have not seen an increase in discipline issues," said Bixby, noting that the numbers have dropped since the school implemented its discipline program called SOAR, which is short for "Success/Organization/Attitude/Respect".

At its crux, the program lists different types of interactions done by the school staff with the students to prevent frequent outbursts of bad behavior. Eighty to 90 percent of all students hear some form of a behavior lecture while only 5 to 10 percent of students are placed in a targeted group considered "at-risk." At the top of the list is the 1-5 percent of students who interact with the school staff one-on-one for "intensive, individual interventions."

Instead of waiting until a student racks up 10 or more referrals before some sort of action is taken, "we know him when he got three or two," said Bixby.

Since being the program fully in the 2005-06 school year, the total number of referrals issues by the school per one hundred students dropped from 80 in 2004-05 to just fewer than 40 in 2007-08, the last available numbers.

The same report also mentions the percentage of students with no referrals has risen from the mid 70s in 2004 to more than 80 percent in the last two school years.

Inside the stats, there is an ethnic breakdown for discipline as well. The percentage of students receiving referrals has dropped amongst all five listed races since 2004, most notably with black and unspecified students, which both hit 50 percent in 2004. Now, both groups are around 30 percent.

Only among Hispanic students was there an increase from 2006 to 2007, and that came particularly from a single incident involving a group of students, Bixby explained.

Future

Bixby has already begun to plan for the 1,500 students projected to walk through the doors of BRMS this fall.

It will not be anything long-time teachers and staff members have not already dealt with, however. Though the school will still be overcrowded, "We have the capacity to absorb those" kids, he said