BOZEMAN Mont.- Last week, parents of students in the elementary schools in the Bozeman School District received an alert about enrollment.
All eight of the elementary schools in Bozeman are close to full and this raised concern for the administrators.
Bozeman School District needed to know if kids were returning to the same elementary school this fall. They received about 50 responses that people were moving and will need to attend a different school than last year.
“It was kind of a relief on our part because with as many people that have been coming in and registering that we were going to need to add some teachers at the last minute,” said Bozeman School District Deputy Superintendent Steve Johnson. “It allowed us to rework those numbers and we are actually closer to our projections.”
For this school year, there were some alterations of who goes to what elementary school.
“We did tweak the boundaries a little bit this year between some of the schools and we grandfathered in the kids that were in the schools so it didn’t really impact them directly but it gives us for new people moving in it gives us the ability to say ‘okay, this is your school’ and place them in their attendance area,” Johnson said.
Because of the change in boundaries, this could alarm families with more than one child.
“We do have a preference for folks that have siblings at a school so we try to keep them together,” Johnson said. “We do our best to keep them together.”
The school district recognizes the growth of Bozeman and understands there will have to be a discussion on how to handle it in the elementary schools in the future.
The official enrollment for all of the schools will be determined by October 1.
Something the school district will also have to start discussing soon is the boundary lines for the high school, which they’ve never had to do before.
