Preliminary enrollment numbers came in for the Platte County R-3 School District at 2,594 students last Thursday, with a significant increase over last year’s end of September figures of 2,407 students.
That’s nearly an 8% increase from last September until this August.
“I think we’ll see about a 150 student increase when everything shakes down,” said Dr. Mark Harpst. “We’ll have more solid numbers after Labor Day.”
According to Harpst, Barry School and the high school were the two buildings that saw the greatest increase in enrollment this year. The increase came from a combination of new students and larger class sizes moving into those two buildings.
Harpst also announced that the school board is endorsing introducing a modified interscholastic competition for the district’s middle school students.
According to Harpst, the district has played intramural scholastic competition for quite some time, but now after decades of considering branching out, the board has decided to try it on a one-year trial basis beginning nextschool year.
“Now with the new middle school, it was suggested that we might want to consider an interscholastic program. So we’re investigating a (interscholastic) plan and seeing if the board thinks it makes sense to move forward,” said Harpst.

