GREENWOOD, Texas — It's always a good thing to have more and more students come to school and fill some seats.
Over at Greenwood ISD, they don't seem to have that problem at all. Their numbers have been steadily rising for a while.
“Over the last few years, we’ve had continuous growth," Greenwood Superintendent Ariel Elliot said. "We’ve continued to grow at about a five percent rate mainly every single year since I’ve been doing this job. We’ve gone in the past ten years from about 1500 kids to about 3200."
While the school has had to adapt to the increase in size, that isn't exactly a bad thing.
Especially considering what that bigger population brings to the schools.
“As we grow it continues to give more opportunities. It requires you to build more programs and to build more things to sustain the growth that we've had," Elliot said. "It also brings a lot of different cultures, a lot of different abilities to our district that we didn't have otherwise."
As for what factors into the increase in students, Elliot likes to give praise to his staff at Greenwood ISD.
Along with the other opportunities afforded to the students.
“Well I think we have tremendous staff here, our teachers are top notch and work hard with our kids," Elliot said. "We offer to opportunities do a lot of co-curricular activities and every kid has an opportunity at our school.”
But it isn't just the school that is growing.
The entire community is growing alongside of it.
More families are moving in so their kids can be closer to schools. That means more houses have to be built.
That, in turn, brings about the businesses that give those families something to do and spend money on.
It's a balanced growth as well, with a similar amount of kindergartners, middle schoolers and high schoolers coming to the area to go to school.
“They really come from all different places, we’ve had them from almost every state," Elliot said. "They continue to move here from all different places.”