By Forrest Adams

The five-year trend has been more students each year, and the 2008-2009 school year begins with more students enrolled in Minnetonka School District than ever in its history.

Approximately 8,100 students are enrolled for school this year. District officials attribute this to a variety of factors, among them housing turnover, open enrollment, academic excellence and small class sizes.

The district has an aging population without school-aged children, but with regards to the housing turnover, a district spokesperson noted: “The district is just now seeing older families moving out and younger families with school-age children moving in.”

This year there are more than 200 students enrolled than during the last school year and nearly 500 more than were enrolled five years ago. They are dispersed throughout the high school, two middle schools and six elementary schools.

In addition, the district is welcoming 63 new teachers into the fold. New Director of Human Resources Tim Alexander said some of them are coming from districts that have been forced to cut their budget. He pointed to voter support of the district through referendum measures, meaning the district has not cut into its budget for three years, as reason why the Minnetonka School District is consistently able to bring in new teachers while many other districts are laying them off.

Open enrollment

Student open enrollment has also been a boon to the district. Estimates show it will bring 933 more students into the district for the 2008-2009 school year. Last year 693 students open enrolled in Minnetonka.

Open enrollment is available to students living outside district boundaries who wish to enroll in the Minnetonka School District nevertheless. The district receives state funding for each open-enrollment student.

“In the past two years, the district has received more than $9 million in added revenue from open-enrollment students,” stated Minnetonka Director of Finance Paul Bourgeois.

The open-enrollment funding is $5,124 per student, with no referendum funding. The same state allowance is applied to students already in the district, but these students are accompanied by referendum funding because their guardians pay local taxes.

Open-enrollment students each year come into Minnetonka from all over the Twin-Cities metropolitan area. This year they came from as far as White Bear Lake and Albertville, according to a district spokesperson. The majority, though, usually come from districts bordering Minnetonka. This year the largest group of students came from District 112 (329 students), Eden Prairie (117 students) and Hopkins (261 students).

The additional funding the district receives through open enrollment goes into its general operating fund, and from there it supports all programs and all students in the District.

From private school

This year for the first time the district kept track of the number of students transferring into its schools from private schools. Preliminary figures show that 150 of the new students were previously enrolled in private schools. They are at all grade levels, but 77 of them are preparing to enter into the high school at the 10th, 11th and 12th grade levels. Of all the former private school students, 100 live in-district and 50 are non-residents.