As Sidney grows, student enrollment increases

Sidney Public Schools enrollment numbers continue to increase. There are officially 1,357 students in the Sidney school system. Over the last decade, there has been an increase of about 200 students at Sidney schools.

According to Sidney High School Principal Chris Arent, there are officially 401 students enrolled at the high school.

"With the rollover in classes in the past 4 years, we have added 78 students," Arent said. "The difficulty in our growth really has been the change in enrollment during the school year. We are not seeing a consistent pattern over the past five years in the change within the school year, so we will continue to monitor the numbers very closely to determine if a more consistent pattern develops within the school year."

There has not been a demand for more courses, however, classes sizes have increased.

"We now see more students in core areas and will have to look at maximizing our current staffing and be responsible in our decisions in staffing moving forward," Arent said.

Sidney Public School District Superintendent Jay Ehler said that Sidney continues to grow a little each year and the average age continues to drop slightly due to young families relocating to Sidney over the years.

"We expect this to continue as the trend. Cabela's and other companies in town are always going to have changes in how many people are being hired from year to year, so it's not easy to predict," Ehler said. "Cabela's is planning on continuing to build more stores so corporate jobs could increase."

"Enrollment growth is one reason we are looking to expand in the upcoming years, but not the only," Ehler said. "Education has changed a great deal in the past 25 years because of growing technology. More space is needed to accommodate added programs at all levels."

Based on current enrollment in the middle school, the high school is projected to add about 25 students over the next two years. There are currently 196 students at Sidney Middle School.

According to Sidney Middle School Principal Brandon Ross, the average class size for seventh and eighth grade has been about 100 students each year.

At North and South elementary schools, there are about 436 students.

According to North and South Elementary Principal Belinda Westfall, numbers have increased at South where class sizes are close to 20 students.

"We are definitely using every classroom and hallway spaces because of lack of extra classrooms," Westfall said. "The gym and cafeteria are multipurpose rooms and they are crowded at both schools. We try to take the students outside as much as possible. Since we are using every space possible it does get very loud and crowded, but we want our kids to converse and socialize."

There are 212 students attending West Elementary and 141 students at Central Elementary.

"Sidney is fortunate to be thriving and growing while most rural communities have continued to decline," Ehler added. "Former students in most cases opt to remain in the bigger cities rather than returning to the rural communities they were raised in. Sidney is different because we have a large company that is strong and continues to bring people in for good jobs. Other entities such as the hospital, Adams Industries, banking industry, schools and T.E. Connectivity, along with smaller companies, are doing much better than in most rural communities."