After a year of every school in Park City School District being closed to open enrollment from out-of-district students, McPolin Elementary School is opening its doors.

The Park City Board of Education voted at its meeting last week to keep every school except McPolin closed to students wishing to enter from outside of the district. In Utah, if a student wants to attend a school in a district that the student does not reside in, they must apply to transfer. Schools with the capacity to take more students are deemed open to enrollment and the Board must allow the student to attend. The Board has the ability to decide how school capacity is measured.

The decision was made using the methodology the Board adopted last year, which takes into account class sizes and instructional spaces, or classrooms, to determine school capacity. Last year, the Board set target class sizes at 23 students for the secondary schools but did not determine a number for elementary schools. Board members said they want class sizes in lower grades to be small, though.

According to data from the district’s open enrollment recommendation for this year, the current class size averages for all schools sit at roughly 20 students. McPolin Elementary School has the smallest average class size with 16.31 and Treasure Mountain Junior High has the largest average with 24.25 students per class.

Given the smaller class sizes compared to the number of classrooms at McPolin, Todd Hauber, business administrator for the district, recommended that the school remain open. The four Board members present at the meeting voted in favor of the recommendation.

Board members did note at the meeting that the dual-language immersion program at McPolin Elementary School might dissuade people from transferring to the school. All classes at McPolin are taught in both Spanish and English.

“Because McPolin is fully dual immersion, it is going to be very difficult for anybody to go into that school who is not entering kindergarten or first grade,” Caplan said after the meeting.