With BSM being a private school, a common priority of the administration is keeping a consistent enrollment. Public schools benefit from the idea of a school district, where students living in a certain city or neighborhood are automatically enrolled in their specific public school. BSM doesn’t have guaranteed incoming students each year, as families and students have to choose to enroll, pay tuition, and be part of our school community.
A big draw for prospective students is often the size of BSM. We are a community where the classes are not so big, like the thousands of kids per grade we see in public schools, but also not as small as some of the other private schools in the area. “The current enrollment at BSM, grades 7 through 12 here on campus, is 1061 students…our 7th grade class sees us with 101 students. We have 94 students in our 8th-grade class; this year’s freshman class is 185 students, [our] 10th-grade class is 226, [the] junior class is 219 and our biggest class this year is the senior class at 237,” Senior High Director of Admissions Betsy Van Cleve said.
To maintain the general enrollment of around 1,000 students, the admissions team has different strategies from year to year. The current freshman class is seen to be significantly smaller than most other grades, but that is a direct effect of the Economic Recession of 2008-2009. “In the past few years, the ninth-grade classes have been down, and that comes from the 2008-2009 financial crisis, where there was actually a reduction in births countrywide,” Lance Butner, board member and chairman of the strategic enrollment team, said.
Even without an economic recession, enrollment does vary from year to year. Another major trend was during COVID-19. Most people would think this would result in a decrease in enrollment, but it actually created an increase. “There are definitely trends that we see that help families make decisions about joining us. [During] a global pandemic, where BSM was fortunate to be on campus, we saw a bump in our enrollment…I think there were about 1200 students here in the building,” Van Cleve said.
BSM has had many years where the applications coming in have been more than the number of spots available at BSM, which is a great thing to see, yet it also creates some challenges. While BSM wants to share all of its amazing attributes with everyone, that isn’t possible when it comes to productivity and space. “When you start running into [issues like] parking spaces and locker spaces, you are also running into bigger class sizes, so, we would love to be bursting at the seams, but I think that at times, that sacrifices that small school community feel of BSM,” Van Cleve said.
Interest in attending BSM seems to grow every year. Recently BSM hosted their fall open house and had a record-breaking amount of attendees. “We are elated to report that our BSM community welcomed 151 future Red Knights and their families into our hallways. This is by far our biggest Open House in the last decade. Of this group, 129 students are looking at joining our family for the 25-26 school year with the remainder looking ahead to future years. Our guests joined us from 54 unique school communities,” Van Cleve said.
Regardless of enrollment ups and downs, the BSM community truly comes together to continue to make our school a better place for all. “I think it’s important that all members of the BSM community, current students, faculty, administration, and alumni, all play a part in advocacy to make sure that we can continue to keep our enrollment up, and as we like to say the world needs more Red Knights,” Butner said.