The Wentzville School District (WSD) continues its rapid expansion as one of the fastest growing districts in the state. A report was put out last September by the district that Liberty High School (LHS) is at 100% of its student capacity with 1,652 students, which makes LHS the largest high school in WSD. This will most likely mean that some kind of change will have to be enforced to keep Liberty under capacity.
The report isn’t surprising as the school district has known about this trend in enrollment for a decent amount of time.
“We’re always projecting in the future, and it’s relatively easy, because all you have to do is look at how many kids are at Frontier [Middle School],” LHS head principal Dr. Ed Nelson said. “If there are more incoming freshmen than outgoing seniors, you know that there will be a higher number of kids at our school.”
The WSD and school administrations have come up with some ideas to solve this problem. According to Nelson, there most likely are three options.
“The three options are, you shift the boundaries where the capacities are more equal, you build onto Liberty or any other high school building, or you can put new teachers on carts and move classes to rooms when teachers have plan hours,” Nelson said.
In some ways though, there are still some uncertainties to this method.
“The thing that’s a little bit unknown is the fact that there are neighborhoods getting built in our boundaries,” Nelson said.
Each of the three possible solutions come with some obstacles though. If you organize the boundaries of high schools, families will be frustrated with having to move schools. If you build on to an existing school, that means a need for more funding for the addition. If you put new teachers on carts, it frustrates teachers in their classrooms because they can’t have their PLAN hour alone in the comfort of their own classroom.
It is a hard decision to make for the board of education, but it is one that has to be made in order to keep Liberty at a safe capacity.
