Schools are in demand

Correction: WSU’s enrollment is its biggest since 2011. An earlier version of this editorial had the incorrect date.

The latest enrollment figures show that learning is a growth industry in Wichita – good news, especially given the area’s glacial recovery of jobs since the recession’s aviation layoffs. But the higher head counts will bring some greater challenges, especially for increasingly diverse USD 259.

After having seen a 2.3 percent dip last fall, Wichita State University grew by 3.1 percent and 453 students to a total 15,003. That was the largest gain in the Kansas Board of Regents system, giving WSU its biggest enrollment since 2011. It also was another indicator of progress on WSU president John Bardo’s big agenda, which includes a goal of increasing enrollment to at least 22,000. Plus, WSU saw total student credit hours rise by 1.7 percent and has a record 73 percent of degree-bound undergraduate and graduate students enrolled full time.

Meanwhile, at a time when many urban public school districts have lost students, Wichita’s continues to grow. It reported enrollment Friday of 51,330, which is a gain of 161 students since last year and the most since 1975. Enrollment has grown 5 percent in a decade, including by 10 percent at the elementary schools.

The numbers continue to surge among the suburbs, too: Goddard grew by 93 students to a total 5,596. Haysville gained 110 students, for a total 5,485. Maize is up 77 students, for a tally of 7,142.

The larger the enrollment, the more state funding a school district receives. But districts also must consider how they will handle more students in the likely event the state trims K-12 funding to try to stave off a budget deficit amid the declining revenues.

The Wichita school board will need to ensure that resources follow the growth, which doesn’t always occur where the capacity is, and to consider whether the trends still align with the 2012 boundary changes.

The latest tally also found that the Wichita district continues its rapid demographic transformation. For the current school year, the district is 34 percent white, 33 percent Hispanic, 18.5 percent African-American, 8 percent multiracial, 4.5 percent Asian or Pacific Islander, and 1.25 percent Native American.

Just 15 percent of the enrollment in 2000-01, Hispanic students soon will outnumber white students – a shift that could bring new challenges and costs related to language. The need for a more diverse school board is deepening as well.

The Wichita district showed itself to be expanding in another way Monday, breaking ground for the new $60 million Southeast High School near 127th Street East and Pawnee. That painful decision for the school board will involve moving programs and teachers from the original Southeast High at Lincoln and Edgemoor.

But it finds the district, like WSU, making an effort to improve what it can offer an increasing number of students.

For the editorial board, Rhonda Holman

This story was originally published September 29, 2014 at 7:07 PM with the headline "Schools are in demand."