After years of enrollment stagnation, Franklin schools plan for growth

Franklin Community Schools has seen declining enrollment in recent years, but that seems poised to change.

While Clark-Pleasant and Center Grove schools have added thousands of students and opened new schools in recent years, Franklin schools’ population has decreased by about 270 students during the past decade.

In the coming years about 1,750 single-family homes and 525 multi-family apartment units are set to be built within Franklin’s school district boundaries. The district includes students from the city of Franklin, town of Bargersville residents who live in Union Township, and Johnson County residents who live outside of city and town limits.

Franklin’s developments are expected to be completed within the next seven years if developments continue at the current pace, said Franklin Mayor Steve Barnett.

Bargersville town officials did not have estimates on when the town’s developments would be completed.

With those developments, Franklin schools projects the district will grow from the current 4,886 population to about 5,650 a decade from now, according to school district documents.

“It’s not just Franklin that feeds into the Franklin schools system, but Bargersville, which has big developments also,” Barnett said. “They’ll probably grow just as fast as Franklin. I talked to (Franklin schools superintendent David) Clendening about future growth and it seems like they have a plan. We can’t stop growth. We have to plan and schools have done that very carefully.”

Part of Franklin schools’ plan has included redrawing boundaries of where elementary school students are enrolled to take the pressure off of larger schools.

For example, Creekside Elementary School would likely run out of room as more students enter its classrooms if boundaries had stayed the same. The school is expected to have an influx of students from the 478 single-family homes when the currently-under construction Bluffs at Young’s Creek subdivision, Clendening said.

With the redrawn boundaries, which go into effect for the 2022-23 school year, the Creekside and Northwood elementary school populations will decrease to prepare for future growth, while Needham and Webb elementary schools will have enrollment increases, according to school officials.

“From our view, the first indication (of future growth) were the new home projections in various communities around our school district. First, we saw them coming through planning commissions. The (Franklin) mayor’s office told us new homes were coming and we’re gonna need room for some growth for school age kids,” Clendening said. “For the last several years we’ve been flat and we had a decline (in enrollment) in the COVID years. We still gotta be very cautious, even with our projections over the next several years.”

If the new homes don’t produce the projected student increase, the school district could see fewer state dollars come in each year. If projections hold, the school district will be able to expand its programming and further increase staff and teacher salaries, Clendening said.

While the addition of hundreds of students may cause Franklin schools to have to construct a new school several years down the road, redistricting has made it so the school district won’t have to take on more debt for a new building until it pays off the project that brought Franklin schools a new high school in 2007. Debt for that project will come off the books during the 2026-27 school year, Clendening said.

“I think growth helps us and allows to sustain our programming,” he said. “If the opposite happens and we have declining enrollment, there will be a significant impact the other way. It allows us to continue to provide a great learning environment. Our teachers are awesome and we would welcome anyone to join us. New families will be quite pleased with what we do in our classrooms.”