From the day they opened Robinson Elementary School and Lincoln Northwest High School, they have done exactly what they were intended to do – that is relieve pressure on overcrowded schools while providing
That is the biggest takeaway from the Lincoln Public Schools’ yearly enrollment “snapshot,” a state-required survey taken on Oct. 1 each year that reveals the number of students at each school and in the entire system.
Robinson Elementary in the Waterford development near 104th and Holdrege streets, opened with 266 students, relieving the pressure on Meadow Lane and Kohoa elementaries, which lost 113 and 50 students respectively and dropped them from their nearly 95% capacity levels last year.
That decrease allows Meadow Lane and Kahoa to operate much more smoothly while students at Robinson get to learn in a new, uncrowded environment.
People are also reading…
“It (the declines) makes it easier to have more classroom space, and it’s also easier on the infrastructure of the school, the cafeteria, the library, crowdedness in the hallways, your ability to have (P.E., arts and technology classes),” LPS associate superintendent of instruction Matt Larson told the Journal Star’s Zach Hammack.
Northwest High opened with 498 ninth, 10th and 11th grade students leading to enrollment drops at North Star, which lost 170 students, and Lincoln High, which is down 138 students – although both schools, with capacities of about 1,900, still have enrollments over 2,000.
The largest school in the city is now Lincoln East, with 2,256 students. That number, however, is expected to significantly decline next fall with the opening of Standing Bear High School in southeast Lincoln, which is expected to draw some 600 to 750 students in its first year.
Standing Bear High, Northwest High and Robinson Elementary were constructed via a $290 million bond issue approved by voters in 2020
For the entire system, a total of 41,784 students from early childhood to 12th grade were enrolled at LPS as of Oct. 1, an increase of just 18 students from 2021. That slight increase, however, was unexpected as LPS originally projected a drop of about 200 students this year based on birth data.
Even though kindergarten enrollment dropped by about 150 students, LPS made up the difference thanks to higher-than-expected preschool enrollment – early childhood enrollment is up 76 students, likely, Larson said, because some families moved to Lincoln.
That flat enrollment level is, perhaps, a telling indicator that LPS has, for now, addressed the need for new schools on the edges of the growing city. It certainly shows that the enrollment pressure of the last decade or so has eased.
And, as that enrollment is distributed into Robinson Elementary and Northwest High – and next year to Standing Bear High, it confirms that the new schools are doing what they were designed to do.