BELLEVILLE, Ill. — A Metro East school district has a good problem to fix.
School leaders say Belleville East High School is at capacity for space as enrollment grows.
The campus sits on 76 acres with 20 buildings plus athletic fields, making it one of the largest high schools in the area.
Belleville District 201 Superintendent Brian Mentzer said they're happy to welcome more students, but with space quickly shrinking, it's become challenging.
"Last year, we graduated our largest graduating class in many years. We had roughly 630 graduates last year, which marks a significant uptick in enrollment. It's a rather large increase over what we've had 10 or 15 years before," the superintendent said. "When you combine it with a couple of other factors on campus, such as lowering instructional class sizes and increasing instructional programming, it creates instructional space issues."
Belleville East has reduced class sizes and added many new student programs and athletic opportunities, which require even more space.
"Every possible space that can be used for instructional purposes is being used on campus. That's a great problem to have, but we are getting to that point where we're starting to get cramped," Mentzer said.
School leaders have found specific areas on campus that are not being used efficiently. Now, Mentzer said they plan to renovate and expand the campus to accommodate the increase.
"The discussion right now is a combination of renovating existing structures and then replacing a temporary structure that we have now, and then adding some square footage that would include things like band, chorus, athleticness, athletics, fitness, and wellness," Mentzer stated.
"For instance, a large classroom building is central to campus that houses Family and Consumer Science, Band, and Chorus. That space would be used more efficiently for classrooms, and those instructional spaces would be much more efficient if we had purpose-built space to accommodate a growing band, chorus program, and family and consumer science program."
The high school campus used to be where students attended classes with the Belleville Area College, now known as Southwestern Illinois College.
"It was built in the 1960s and was originally a junior college, and shortly after its construction, that junior college decided to move to another campus, and it became Belleville East High School," said Mentzer.
Mentzer said planning will continue throughout the next year as they search for funding that doesn't burden taxpayers and determine if a boost in the population plays into the enrollment increase.
"We're trying to be creative in our search for revenues to cover the cost. We're trying to get a handle on what's going to happen for years to come, what is happening with our students that currently reside in our community that are not of high school age, and then also trying to determine where additional students are coming from that are attending our schools," said Mentzer.
District officials said the multi-phase project with new renovations and improvements could take a few years to finish.