Newswest 9
ODESSA/MIDLAND - The booming economy has the Basin seeing an increase of people moving to the area. The school districts are experiencing the growth first hand both Midland and Odessa have seen an increase in student enrollment this semester.
"We are looking at over 800 students from this time last year, so we have seen a large number of boys and girls come to our school system," Dr. Randy Baiza Chief of Operations said.
Dr. Randy Baiza Chief Operations Officer for MISD tells us although they don't have an exact number of how many students have enrolled this semester, he knows its probably higher than last year. He attributes that to the economy, and says they will make sure every school has the learning space they need.
"We have added additional classrooms at Long and Emerson Elementary, so we continue to monitor our student growth we add facilities and add teachers as we need them," Baiza said.
However, MISD is not the only district that has seen a hike in enrollments, according to Mike Adkins with ECISD, they also have seen an increase in student enrollment for the new semester.
"This is day three of us being opened since the winter break and we have seen an increase of 40 students so that's probably a pretty good number for just a couple of days and we'll see if that continues, but yeah we have seen a 40 student increase so far," Adkins said.
Adkins says every elementary school has portable classrooms, unfortunately if they continue to see an increase in enrollment they might have a difficult time obtaining additional portable classrooms.
"There is a real lack of portables classrooms especially in this area where everybody has been seeking them," Adkins said.
With both school districts seeing an increase, they both can't wait to break ground on the new schools.
"There's a lot of growth in Midland student growth it an interesting time it a great time to be here," Baiza said.
