MONTGOMERY, Ind. (WTWO/WAWV) — While many schools across the state have seen a decrease in enrollment numbers, Barr-Reeve Community Schools currently has the most students, they’ve ever had.
“We looked at some numbers and I think we’re up over 40% in the last decade as far as student enrollment numbers,” Travis Madison, superintendent of Barr-Reeve Community Schools, said.
Madison said not only have they seen a steady increase, but this year they are seeing record enrollment numbers.
“This year we will be at a record enrollment for the corporation. We’re at about 1,022 students so this is the first time we’ve ever been over a thousand as a K-12 school corporation,” Madison said.
Madison explained the school corporation has seen a steady increase in its kindergarten numbers over the years, and the kids are sticking with them all through high school.
“We’ve seen a lot of them come in at the very earliest so our kindergarten numbers are what’s kind of driven this and they’ve kind of just maneuvered up. I know this year our graduating class that my son is in has 47. That’s a very small senior class but the next is 69,” Madison said.
Since the Barr-Reeve has been growing consistently over the years, Madison said they wrapped up a project last year to expand the classroom space, to accommodate more students.
“We just completed in 2020 and into 2021 a major renovation project for us. We added on a brand new gym but also we really added on some significant classroom space, we utilized an old gym and made it into six classrooms and then added another four classrooms on the addition as well,” Madison said.
Whitney Clinton has a third grader who currently attends Barr-Reeve. She and her family live in Washington, but they choose to have their son Ryan go to Barr-Reeve even though it’s not technically in their district.
“I think for me and my husband, the choice to go to Barr-Reeve was more of a – we want to give Ryan every chance to succeed that we possibly can, and knowing that Barr-Reeve was more of a small community, smaller school, we felt that Ryan would be able to get the help that he needed,” Clinton said.
Madison said with more kids continuing to come from in and out of the districts, they are already starting to grow out of the expanded space.
“Unfortunately, we’re now at capacity again so we’re entertaining and looking at options as far as maybe another addition to the school district. We also want to make sure we’re preparing ourselves in case Pre-K comes to us,” Madison said.
Barr-Reeve K-12 currently operates on one campus, so Madison said they also want to make sure they have room for preschoolers if that comes to fruition later down the road.
