A record setting enrollment this year has officials at Concordia Lutheran High School taking an opportunistic, but cautious approach to the future. Concordia has a total of 435 students enrolled in classes at the moment, with 129 of them being freshmen. That adds up to a 30 percent increase in just one school year.

“It’s a great opportunity to instill and teach our values to a whole new group of people,” said Principal Mark Bahr. “After taking such a big jump we are cautiously optimistic that we are in a growth phase.”

While that opportunity has been the source of much excitement, Bahr said that being a private and parochial school means that enrollment numbers and predictions can sometimes be unpredictable.

“When you are both, enrollment can fluctuate from year to year and even semester to semester,” said Bahr.

That fluctuation leads to some caution, as far as how many students the school would ultimately accept in its current building.

“I’m guessing it would be somewhere between 450-475 at our maximum size, but even that would be crowded,” said Bahr.

The size of the school is just about where officials deem it necessary in order to keep class sizes at their preferred levels of 22-24 students.

“That’s just an average size,” Bahr said. “Of course some classes that are more specialized have fewer students and required courses have more.”

The school has had an enrollment of over 400 students just once in its history, according to Bahr. On average, the school usually hovers between 375-400 students. The school employs 50 people, 35 of which are teachers.

“Long term if we want to grow we would probably have to expand,” Bahr said. “That is up to our board to talk about building plans though.”

Originally founded in 1984, the school built the present campus in 1996 and 40 percent of its student body is Lutheran. The rest of the students, while not Lutheran, must fit into the mission of the school as a whole, in order to be accepted.

“They must know that we are a spiritually principled school,” Bahr said. To that he added that there are three factors when deciding on whom to add to the student body. Bahr said they must be a spiritual fit and they must fit in to the school both academically and socially. Behavior issues are also taken into consideration.

“We are going to try and find out ahead of time if we (the student and school) are a match,” he said.

That being said, Bahr mentioned that he is excited about the potential growth and the ability to educate and reach more students.

“There is something great about growth and I love the mission of telling what we are all about,” he said. “Our mission, our tradition and our heritage can meet anyone’s need that truly needs or wants it.”

Photo By Caleb Harris

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed