Doesn't really matter if they are growing or not, most schools accept open enrollment, especially for sports. There is a clear transfer portal, especially to the biggest, fastest growing suburban schools. Johnston had 6 transfers start on their state title soccer team last year.
Sorry, this is wrong. It actually does matter if they are growing. Often a district will say that our ideal grade size or class size is ____. Then they close open enrollment for that grade at a set number so they still have room for move-in residents. So some grades in that district that are smaller may have an allotment for open enrollment while larger grades in that district do not. Typically isn’t district-wide yes or no decision but grade by grade.
Let’s say your district says that 25 kids per class is ideal. Once you get to that number (or maybe a district sets it slightly below at 23 or 24), they close open enrollment. So if I have 4 sections of 4th grade, that number is 100 (25x4). If, because of move ins, 4th grade has 110 kids, they don’t have any open enrollment. Now if the school adds a 5th section to that grade to lower class sizes, they would have 15 spots available for open enrollment (25x5).
There’s no way a growing district has no limits on open enrollment. First, they have to constantly be hiring teachers to accommodate, which would destroy their budget - keep in mind, schools in Iowa are paid a year behind. Their budget this year is based on their enrollment last October. They simply wouldn’t have the spending authority to keep hiring teachers for unfettered growth. They’d be stuck to whatever the formula gives them from a year ago.
Even if they could, they’d run out of classrooms too fast. There are requirements on debt loads that districts can carry which limits their bonding capacity. Even if they could pass a bond every year (which they can’t) it would still take 2 years from design to completion to use the space. So you could not put up buildings fast enough.
Sports generally have nothing to do with it for a public school because those kids have to come for school too. A school would have to have a procedure or system to determine who gets in or not. If they had some magical carve out for athletes, they’d get sued and lose. Parents can request records for that sort of thing. I think schools can have a separate and tighter open enrollment matrix for special education because of the higher needs and level of programming existing in a district. But there is no way they allow some kids for athletics and say no to others. Not even a wink and a nod to get someone in. Again, if they don’t follow their procedure, they’d get sued by someone who didn’t get in and lose.
So if Johnston had 6 kids who were open enrolled on their soccer team, they happened to have space for them in school. If they are growing, they must have added teachers which then freed up space.