The Park City School District had over 90 applications to its open enrollment program over the summer, but each of the four elementary schools still has vacant seats despite the school board’s attempts to slow declining enrollment trends.
The open enrollment period, which only applied to elementary schools, started on June 23, with approximately 150 available spots. The district on Tuesday said it received 91 applications, 75 of which were approved.
Superintendent Lyndsay Huntsman said 10 of those families ultimately decided to decline the offer because the district is unable to provide transportation to students living outside its boundaries.
Sixteen of the 91 applications were denied, but school officials did not elaborate on the reasoning behind the rejections.
In total, 65 open enrollment students were approved: 26 for McPolin Elementary School, 17 for Jeremy Ranch Elementary School, 13 for Parley’s Park Elementary School and nine for Trailside Elementary School.
The four schools still have 237 open seats, though, with 85 spots specifically earmarked for potential open enrollment students.
Huntsman in a June interview with The Park Record said she was hopeful the special open enrollment period would help balance class sizes, pointing to projections that Summit County will see a decline of 400 kids in the 5 to 14 age range in the next five years.
The elementary schools try to stick to a student-teacher ratio of 23-to-1, and the district accounted for families moving in over the summer when calculating how many open spots to extend to people outside the district’s boundaries, Huntsman said.
However, not every school had the same number of openings depending on the campus’ already existing student population. For example, Huntsman said McPolin Elementary School had the most seats while Trailside Elementary had the fewest, a distribution reflected in the acceptance numbers presented to the school board this week.
Huntsman previously said she was hopeful the district would keep open enrollment in subsequent years if the program were successful this fall and there continued to be available seats. She’s also interested in opening enrollment for the middle schools and Park City High School, but she wanted to hold off to give the district time to settle into its grade realignment following Treasure Mountain Junior High’s closure.
She added that it’s difficult to predict when or if schools will need to close in the future, but open enrollment is an effort to offset declining student populations and keep the doors open in the long run.
“That is certainly one of the reasons why we made this decision to open enrollment now, versus waiting and being reactive,” Huntsman explained in June. “It allows us to fill available capacity and also let more families access our amazing education that we’re able to afford families here in Park City.”
This summer wasn’t the first time the district has opened enrollment to families outside its boundaries, but it had been a few years since the opportunity was last offered, Huntsman said. She estimated the previous open enrollment period was before the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
The district will continue to accept open enrollment applications until all seats are filled, even though the school year has already started. Information on the application process is available online by visiting pcschools.us/enrollment/open-enrollment-2025-2026-school-year-k-5.