PSD Enrollment
Enrollment is growing throughout the Poudre School District, but the school buildings can only hold so many students. Each year students try to ‘choice in’ to Rocky and other schools, causing some schools to be very full and others to see populations decrease.
Class sizes at Rocky have grown each year, with the freshman class always being the largest. This influx of students creates crowded classrooms.
With Rocky’s block schedule, students and teachers are able to have smaller class sizes, but even with this our classrooms can’t hold many more people.
PSD has approximately 30,000 students with Rocky having close to 2,000 students. The original building was not designed to hold 2,000 students and it has gone through several renovations since then, none quite big enough. The only way to make more room is to take fewer students. Rocky has to accept students in their school boundaries, but they also take a number of ‘school of choice’ students each year.
Dr. Woodall said, “We try and keep it around 2,000 kids, taking into account previous years and then using that to determine how many more people to accept.”
While it seems unfair to turn kids away, Rocky simply cannot take them all. Other schools are placing modular buildings around their campuses. While Rocky has no plans to do that, students may see some relief as new schools are planned. Two new middle/high schools and an elementary school are in the planning stages and awaiting the funds for building. These new schools should alleviate crowding in Rocky and other schools that are at capacity.
It is understandable that more students want to transfer here, but it’s not fair to the students already here who can barely fit in some classrooms.
Rebecca Griffith is a junior at Rocky Mountain High School. She enjoys playing tennis and being with her friends. After high school Rebecca wants to study...
