This article was originally published in Beacon: Kansas City.
After decades of declining enrollment, Kansas City Public Schools is setting a new trend. The number of students is growing steadily.
For the third year in a row, the district’s enrollment at the end of September was higher than the year before. Preliminary figures show that KCPS has added 570 primary and secondary students since the official counting day last year, an increase of approximately 4%.
That means there are more than 14,000 students for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic sent enrollment to record lows. Including toddlers, there are more than 15,000.
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With growth comes changes in who the district serves.
Black students, who made up about 58% of the district during the 2024-2015 school year, fell below the majority this year to about 46% of pre-K-12 enrollment. Hispanic students represent an increasing share of the district, more than a third this year.
Much of the recent growth has come from families moving to schools that feed Northeast High School and from students needing help learning English.
But the growth doesn’t necessarily stop once students are counted and the year is in full swing. During the past school year, KCPS added 970 primary and secondary students between early September – before counting day – and mid-April.
That’s happening again, said Deputy Superintendent Derald Davis. “We continue to enroll new students every day.”
Where enrollment growth takes place
Schools in the North East have led the way in increasing enrollments, adding hundreds of students both this year and last.
This year, East High School’s feeder schools also added 150 students, and the Central High School region added nearly 90. Only the Southeast High School region lost students.
Many of those new students are still learning English. The 430 additional students learning the English language compared to last year account for approximately two-thirds of the total enrollment growth before primary and secondary education.
Overall, English-language students make up nearly a quarter of the district. The largest group of them were born in the U.S., Davis said.
“Maybe they have families that come from elsewhere,” he said. “If English is not spoken at home, there may still be many students entering kindergarten with limited English proficiency.”
Hundreds of other students come from Honduras, Mexico and Tanzania.
The growth comes as KCPS prepares to complete a construction plan intended to improve learning and address deferred maintenance issues in a district built for a larger number of students.
A draft of the construction plan includes opening, closing and moving schools to different buildings. It is not as focused on reducing the number of schools as the plan the district unveiled in 2022.
Enrollment growth makes it easier to justify keeping buildings open and helps bring in the state tax dollars needed to maintain them. But the plan depends on voters approving a bond in April 2025.
A district strategic plan calls for KCPS to enroll at least 15,000 K-12 students by 2025, a goal that could be achieved in the coming year with enrollment growth of about 5.5%. By 2030, KCPS wants to have 17,000 students.
This article first appeared on Beacon: Kansas City and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
