Photo by Deb Gau Classrooms at the recently-constructed RTR school building were open to visitors at a fall 2021 open house. RTR Superintendent David Marlette said enrollment at the district has grown over the past two years, and school board members will be discussing potential facilities needs on Monday.

TYLER — It’s only been two years since the Russell-Tyler-Ruthton school district opened a new K-12 school building in Tyler. However, enrollment growth is forcing RTR officials to discuss possible facilities needs in the future.

“We’re just starting to talk about it,” RTR Superintendent David Marlette said this week. “We haven’t decided anything.”

However, Marlette said the district currently has about 675 students in a school building designed for 700 students. If RTR continues to grow in the future, it raises questions of whether they will need more space.

The RTR School Board will hold preliminary discussions at its meeting Monday night, Marlette said.

“It’s part of our needs assessment,” Marlette said.

He thought it was likely that board members would want to gather more information and public input before making any decisions.

“The other thing that is really important for us is to look at day care,” Marlette said.

The need for child care options is another important issue affecting people in the RTR area, he said.

The new K-12 RTR school building opened in 2021, after more than a year of planning and construction. In 2019, taxpayers in the RTR district approved a $35 million referendum to build the school. The new building in Tyler replaced the former RTR elementary school in Ruthton, the middle school in Russell and the former high school building in Tyler.

Marlette said RTR had an enrollment of 619 when the school was built, and have since gone up into the range of 675 students, he said. RTR has also seen an increase in the number of students open-enrolled into the district, he said. RTR currently has 131 open-enrolled students coming into the district, compared to 103 students when the building opened, Marlette said.

Before construction of the new school building, one of the RTR district’s drawbacks was the age and condition of its facilities, Marlette said. It was possible that more families were interested in attending school at the new building.

Marlette said it didn’t seem like enrollment growth at RTR was due to an influx of students from any one place.

“It’s 360 degrees, all around,” he said.

According to data from the Minnesota Department of Education, there were students living in several surrounding school districts — including Ivanhoe, Lake Benton, Marshall, Lynd, Murray County Central, Pipestone and Tracy, who were open-enrolled at RTR in the 2022-23 school year. However, the open enrollment data going back over the past five school years didn’t show large fluctuations in enrollment from the surrounding districts.

Superintendents at some of the school districts neighboring RTR say enrollment numbers have been relatively steady in the past couple of years.

“Overall, I would say our enrollment is holding fairly steady,” said Marshall Public Schools Superintendent Jeremy Williams.

He said MPS had an enrollment of 2,506 students on March 1, not counting early childhood students. Enrollment numbers haven’t stayed at exactly that level since the beginning of the school year, but “It’s pretty common to see some fluctuation,” Williams said.

As of February, MPS had a total of 154 open-enrollment students coming to Marshall. That number did not include students enrolled through Marshall’s interdistrict cooperative agreements with Lynd and Milroy.

In 2023, there are also 205 students living in the Marshall district who were open-enrolled at other school districts, Williams said. That was slightly up from 2022, when 199 students were open-enrolled outside MPS, and from 2021, when there were 192 students open-enrolling out.

Kevin Enerson, superintendent of Pipestone Area Schools, said the Pipestone district typically has a net total of 110 students open-enrolling out to other school districts. Usually there will be 150 students open-enrolled outside the Pipestone District, and 40 coming in, he said.

“This has stayed fairly consistent over the past five years,” Enerson said.

Department of Education enrollment data said Pipestone Area Schools had a total enrollment of 1,105 students for the 2022-23 school year. That figure was based on the Oct. 1 enrollment numbers schools reported to the MDE.

Tracy Area Public Schools Superintendent Chad Anderson said enrollment in Tracy has declined somewhat over the past three years. Enrollment went from 672 students in 2020 to 643 students in 2022.

“The reason our enrollment has dropped is because we have graduated some large classes and the kindergarten classes coming in are smaller,” Anderson said. The Tracy graduating class of 2021 had 71 students, he said. In comparison, the kindergarten class of 2022 has 40 students.

“Our enrollment will now level off because most high school class sizes average 55 (students), and elementary classes average 45,” Anderson said. He said TAPS usually gains around 7 to 10 students in the seventh grade, both from students coming from Milroy Public School and St. Mary’s School, and from families moving into the district.

Marlette said the RTR School Board would be discussing topics including possible facilities needs, the current building bond, and child care needs, during meeting at 7 p.m. Monday in Tyler. If there turn out to be a large number of people in attendance, the meeting would move from the boardroom to the RTR auditorium, Marlette said. The meeting would also be available to watch via livestream at the RTR website, he said.