Neighborhoods are filling up. Hallways and classrooms are packed. The lunchroom is running out of seats. Liberty has little room for students, seeing their highest enrollment numbers ever at 1,732 students.
This is the first time that a school in the Wentzville School District has reached full capacity. In recent years, Timberland and Holt have reached close to maximum capacity, and in return North Point High School was built, and students from both Timberland and Holt were transferred to the new high school. However, with the news of Liberty capping out on the number of students, there are no rumors about any new schools being built.
“There have not been discussions at this time [regarding building a new high school],” Superintendent Brian Bishop said. “However, we will need to discuss the possibility of needing elementary schools in the high-growth areas of the District.”
There are two factors that determine what the capacity of a school is; the architects stated capacity which is the permanent number of people that the building can hold, and the second is the information from an MGT study for the optimal capacity, which is designed to create a number of students that does not max out the classrooms.
Maxing out the classrooms is one of the biggest concerns when it comes to a school at full capacity. It can affect not only the students but the teachers. Some core class teachers have been seeing their numbers sky rocket but also go down, such as government and psychology teacher Matthew Barker, who has seen a big change in his classes.
“I do have bigger classes this year, but to be honest, I teach an elective class, AP Psychology and the kids that want to take that class are signing up in big numbers,” Barker said. “I also teach US Government, which is required by every student in the state of Missouri, and my numbers are actually down a little in that class.”
According to Bishop, the numbers of students at the high schools are very different, where the number of students compared to the capacity of the schools are smaller in middle schools than in the high schools.
“These numbers suggest that incoming classes are slightly smaller than outgoing classes,” Bishop said.
While the number of outgoing classes larger than incoming classes means fluctuations in core classes numbers, it also impacts clubs such as Student Council (StuCo). Government teacher and StuCo adviser Lindsey Holmes has also seen a decrease in the number of students taking her government class because government is now a dual enrollment elective, meaning some students won’t take it inside the school. Although the required government class has seen dropping numbers, StuCo on the other hand has seen an increase in numbers.
“Last year I actually had the most kids I’ve ever had tryout for StuCo. I had 70 applicants for 16 spots because the classes can only have 30-ish kids in here, so that has definitely been a big impact on our class,” Holmes said.
Though incoming classes are a little smaller than outgoing classes, being at capacity is still a challenge for everyone in the school.
