Ten years ago, the De Soto school district had 3,215 students and enrollment numbers have since increased to 6,700 district wide.
On Sept. 20, the official count day, district officials learned that 174 new students from K-12 had come into the district. Out of these students, 59 are at Mill Valley.
Although district growth is not as fast as in previous years, a steady growing trend remains. Director of administrative services and community relations Alvie Cater said that next year the district could easily see 6,900 students enrolled and it won’t be long before it reaches 7,000.
Most of the district growth is taking place in the K-5 level, but MV is also seeing an increase in students.
Cater said the economy was just one of the factors contributing to the school’s growth.
“When families choose the city in which they want to relocate, what they first consider are schools,” Cater said. “I think Mill Valley offers wonderful educational opportunities and that is attractive to them.”
By contrast, De Soto High School remains steady at 644 students, but some may have wondered why MV students weren’t transferred to DHS or why a third high school wasn’t built in order to prevent MV’s overcrowding.
“[Expanding Mill Valley] is cheaper than building a third high school. It’s really expensive to operate even a small high school. Second, we didn’t want to change boundary lines,” Cater said.
An important factor in this decision was the fact that 75% of district students live in Shawnee, where the growth is occurring.
Given these new enrollment numbers, MV still remains a 5A classified school, according to the Kansas State High School Activities Association. Cater predicts MV will be a 5A school for a while, depending on how fast the school grows and if the state changes its classification numbers.
Although variables in the economy make it tough to predict, Cater says next year the district is predicting about 200 new students maximum. As for MV, 1,100 were predicted this school year. Although an estimated 1,150 students will be students at MV next year, recent building additions leave plenty of extra space. Cater says MV has a few years before it reaches its capacity of 1,450.
In 2,000, a total of 884 high school students were present in the district and that number has since been raised to 1,740. As an effect of the increasing number of students, MV is now considered a standard Johnson County high school versus a small high school, according to Cater.
“Mill Valley is proof that regarding the small high school concept, we’re beginning to shift,” Cater said.
