GRETNA, Neb. (KMTV) — At Gretna High School, the scene between class periods is hectic. Students walk shoulder-to-shoulder in hallways, just trying to get to their next classes, with more and more students expected to come to classrooms in the district in the future.
“In the next five to ten years we’ll probably double in size,” said Gretna Public Schools Superintendent Rich Beran.
Gretna Public Schools currently sits at over 6,000 students, which is around 1,500 more students than they had five years ago. Those trends aren’t changing soon.
In the next 30 to 40 years, Beran says projections show the district will be of similar size to Millard Public Schools.
“It's just been non-stop change and growth.”
It’s not tough to see why, with new houses and lots constantly for sale, that are just as quickly sold in district boundaries.
To address that growth and what’s expected in the future, they’ve been building: adding a second middle school, several elementary schools, expanding Gretna High School and building a second high school.
Beran says for every new school thousands, maybe millions of small decisions go along with it.
“We still want to keep that culture of Gretna. Whether you’re a Griffin or a Dragon, that culture remains the same. So that’s our biggest challenge,” said Beran.
Further north in Bennington, Superintendent Terry Haack has seen his district go from a class C2 school to a district that is now high Class B. And it's still rapidly growing.
Haack has similar identity challenges with Bennington as Beran does with Gretna.
“That’s the difficulty, bringing new people on and making sure they have the same culture and values that your community is known for,” said Beran.
Bennington currently sits at around 3,800 students. They project in the next two years they’ll be at around 4,500 students, and by the end of the decade at over 6,000 students; roughly the size of Kearney and Westside Community Schools.
To show how quickly it’s growing, look at Anchor Pointe Elementary. Built in 2019, it already has more students than its designated capacity. A new elementary school and middle school will open in 2023.
“We’re kind of an odd bird in the fact that we’re building buildings every two to three years,” said Haack.
This ballooning student population has its financial challenges, as the more buildings you construct, the less efficient you become.
“You can’t cut a secretary in half, okay. You can’t cut a principal, your foodservice, your cleaning service, you’ve got a new building to open up so you got to pay for new electricity, gas, water, all the utilities,” said Haack.
The schools right now are about as efficient as you can get.
Both schools charge residents about as high property taxes as possible and receive money from the state. But when you look at the numbers, Bennington and Gretna rank number one and two, respectively in cost per student.
“So there’s efficiency in the size of the school,” said Haack.
As both school leaders consider decisions that will likely affect the children of the students in class now, Beran says the decision-making process is about one question.
“What it comes right down to is that’s the core of the decision, what is really best for children,” said Beran.
The school leaders also say finding quality teachers for brand new schools has been a challenge, but Haack points out, they benefit from the larger pool of candidates in the Omaha metro area.
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