In Kansas, it’s the first year of open enrollment, where parents can apply to send their kids to any public school district they want, no matter where live. One of the stipulations though is that the desired building in that other school district has to have room or capacity for that student. Early estimates from two of Johnson County’s largest public school districts show that a small amount of parents took advantage of this new law this year. Shawnee Mission School District (SMSD) Chief Communications Officer David Smith says 38 students are transferring into the school district from outside of its boundaries for the 2024-2025 school year. “When we think of about 38 students, that’s out of 26,000, so it’s just a little over one tenth of one percent,” Smith said in an interview with FOX4 Wednesday. “That’s a really small number. and I guess to me, that means that there probably wasn’t a lot of public interest or support.” Republican State Senator Molly Baumgardner supported the bill that called for the open enrollment policies. She said there were more than 1,000 openings available in the SMSD for the upcoming school year. The only other Kansas school district in the metro bigger than Shawnee Mission is Olathe. At a July board meeting, Olathe Public School (OPS) leaders talked about this issue and went more in-depth about the transfer numbers in. District wide at the elementary level in Olathe, there were 386 openings available but just 28 open enrollment applications into the district. At the middle school level, there were 119 openings and 21 open enrollment applications into the district. At the high school level, there were 85 openings available and 29 applications to enroll into the district. “I don’t think that school districts knew really what to predict,” Baumgardner said in an interview with FOX4 Wednesday. As to whether a school district can accommodate more students depends on whether they’re growing, according to Baumgardner. “You have some school districts such as Spring Hill which just like Maize, that’s west of Wichita, they are the two fastest growing districts,” she continued. “They have very little [transfers in]. In fact Maize said, we have no openings for anyone except for those students that live within our service area.” The enrollment for OPS has dropped since 2021, according to their website. In 2021, they had 29,404 students. In 2022, they had 29,043. In 2023, they had 28,619. The application process for a parent wanting their child to attend a different public school district than the one they live in in Kansas closed at the end of June for this upcoming school year.
Source: fox4kc.com | FOX 4 – WDAF