High schools open to additonal students

For the 2023-24 school year, both high schools in the district will open themselves up to option enrollment. Papio South principal Mr. Jeff Spilker explained what option enrollment would mean for the school.

     “Option enrollment allows for the opportunity for students that live outside of our district to attend schools within our district,” Spilker said. 

     PLSHS was built to hold 2,200 students. Currently, the school’s enrollment is a little over 1,900, which creates opportunities for students from out of the district to transfer in. The school is allowing no more than 60 total external transfers into the school for next year. Spilker said  the numbers would vary by grade, 

     “That [60] is divided up amongst the four grades at a fairly even number, but our biggest class next year is the sophomore class. Our senior and junior classes are going to have the most number of spots, because those are the two smallest classes,” Spilker said.      “When I talk about the largest class and smallest class, there’s not a drastic difference between class sizes. It’s not like one class has 350 and the other class has 500.” 

     Spilker estimated that all four grade levels had close to 475 students currently. External transfers are the focus of option enrollment, but Spilker said internal transfers would still get priority. District guidelines were set to make sure internal transfers would be pushed ahead and of utmost priority. 

     “They want to take care of student requests in the district … before taking care of students outside the district,” Spilker said. 

     This will not be the first time Papio South has opened to option enrollment. The school turns to it when there is a significant number of empty spots, but will go back away from it when the school enrollment gets too full. 

     “In the past history of Papillion South over our 20 years, we have been open to option enrollment,” Spilker said. “What changed us to stop option enrollment was when we looked at the population of our own students in the district, we did not have the extra space. So if development and growth continues in the area, there definitely could be a day in the coming years where we have to go back to being closed to option enrollment because we could grow back to being at capacity.” 

     If both PLSHS and PLHS get full, there is a possibility that a new high school could be built, according to Spilker. 

     “If that happens, where you see us get back to capacity, that’s going to be the time where you hear talk of that third high school potentially being built,” Spilker said. “They have the land for it, but they’re not building that until both high schools grow back to capacity.” 

If that were to happen, it would be far in the future, Spilker said. When it comes to next year, internal students had to declare their transfers by Feb. 1. The deadline for external transfers is March 15. Once all applications are in, external transfers will be  chosen using a random lottery system by the school board. 

     Spilker explained: “This is not a situation in which Mr. Spilker gets 75 applications and I look through it and say, ‘Ooh, this person’s a good actor.’ ‘Oh, this person is a top saxophone player.’ ‘Oh, this person can run fast.’ It is done by a lottery system, and it’s done by Central Office.”