Kindergarten enrollment in Blue Valley is up; in fact, Blue Valley Schools have seen steady growth throughout the district, according to its 2022 Enrollment Report. However, some enrollment numbers are still recovering from setbacks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Catch up quick: The Blue Valley Board of Education on Monday looked at the district’s annual enrollment report, which depicts how enrollment numbers have changed across the district in the past few years.

Here are some key takeaways from the 2022 Enrollment Report:

Increasing enrollment: Enrollment at Blue Valley has increased but not completely rebounded since the district saw a significant decline in its number of students during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic

• For the 2019-20 school year, the district’s total headcount was 22,251 students. For the 2022-23 school year, it was 21,797.
• Blue Valley Planning and Operations Assistant Director Erik Pollom said the district projects it will return to the 22,000 student range by the 2024-25 school year.

Kindergarten numbers: After having the largest kindergarten class in the district’s history last school year, the number of kindergarteners enrolling in Blue Valley has returned to pre-pandemic levels.

• Blue Valley has 1,469 kindergarteners enrolled in the district compared to the 1,554 enrolled last year.
• “You could say last year was a correction for the year before, but we’ve fallen right back into that steady 1,400 size class that we’ve seen in the years preceding 2020,” Pollom said.

Looking to the future: The number of new houses being built in the Blue Valley area, which is monitored in order for the district to know where new facilities need to be built, is still significantly higher when comparing it to the amount of growth seen before the pandemic, district staff noted.

• The current number of new single-family building permits in Blue Valley is 405, while it was 315 in 2020.
• Most of the district’s new housing activity is in the southwest portion of the district, according to Pollom.