I always enjoy attending the gathering of all the employees in the Hamilton Southeastern(HSE) School District the day before school begins each year.  It is a joyful atmosphere, more a pep rally than a meeting.  That atmosphere fills the Fishers High School Gymnasium.

When Superintendent Allen Bourff spoke before the crowd this year, he made a stunning statement.  The student population may well exceed 22,000 this school year.  That would be the first time the number of students in the school district numbered 22,000 or more.

I thought back to July of last year, when the demographer used by HSE Schools for many years, Dr. Jerry McKibben, unveiled his student number projections.  I went back and reviewed that report.  His prediction for the K-12 student number during the 2019-2020 school year was 21,593.

That means there are at least 400 more students in the current school year than projected, if HSE Schools has more than 22,000 youngsters in classrooms this school year.  So, the obvious question is – how did this happen?

I posed that question to Dr. Bourff in a podcast interview conducted on the first day of school.  He says administrators are studying that issue, and are still looking at how many students do not end up returning to HSE Schools for a variety of reasons.

“We know that on the west side of the district, as those older neighborhoods turnover, that they could very well be turning over to younger families who are….making the enrollment climb again,” Bourff told me in the podcast.  “But we also know that on the east side, housing has really developed to the point that, we have a brand new building, Southeastern Elementary, that was supposed to be at 80% capacity, that is now at capacity, perhaps even over.”

The school transportation system contains technology to chart the number of students in each school and compare the projections to the actual student count.  That data will help break down schools where the additional students are located.

The question many families are asking is this – will HSE Schools need to once again use portable classrooms to handle the extra students?

“I hope not,” was the immediate response from Dr. Bourff when I posed that question.  HSE Schools have not disposed of the portable classrooms, so they are available if needed.

The solution to this may center on what happens to Durbin Elementary School in Wayne Township.  The school district has been considering an expansion of Durbin at the current location, but there is a big complication in going down that road.

It would cost a minimum of $5 million to extend water and utility lines to the Durbin school location, which is not currently served by such utilities.  In order to expand that school, utilities would need to be extended.

Dr. Bourff admitted that developers like an elementary school in or near their neighborhoods and he has had conversations with such firms recently, without providing any additional details.  Water and utility access would not be a problem in that case.

The school board was told in late July that a decision on Durbin needs to be done no later than January of 2020.  If the school board acted then, assuming all goes as planned, it would be two years before a new or renovated Durbin would be ready for students.

So, HSE Schools are facing more students than expected, the future of Durbin will determine how to handle the additional students, and revised projections are needed to know where to go from here.

Let’s watch what happens over the next few months.

You can listen to the entire podcast interview with Dr. Bourff at this link.