West Fargo To Add Elementary School - Valley News Live - KVLY/KXJB - Fargo/Grand Forks

The West Fargo School District will build a new elementary school much sooner than expected. Tonight (Monday), the West Fargo School Board unanimously voted to go forward with plans because of it's limited space and growing class sizes.

West Fargo Superintendent, David Flowers, says, "It's not a good situation to be in."

You could call it a "growing" problem. Classroom size is on the rise in many North Dakota schools, and the West Fargo School District is one of them.

Flowers says, "Attendance would probably be affected if we had to disperse students to spaces where every nook and cranny might exist."

Flowers says, with hundreds of new students coming in every year, plans to build a new school came a little sooner than they thought. With rapid growth in West Fargo south of I94, and a rough estimate of an 8% increase in students this year, classrooms are crowded and space is limited.

West Fargo School Board Member, Dave Olson, "With the boom that we've had, I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to see that down in that area, it's just going to continue and we have to find a way to handle that."

From here they'll work to get more state funding and hope to have the school running in the next couple years. And now that they have a plan, for now, they'll have to use all the space they have.

Flowers says, "So the new students that are coming in, we're going to need to find a way to accommodate these students."

School district officials hope the school will be built by fall of 2014. They still have to decide where it will be built.