BCSD sees increase in enrollment first week

BONNERS FERRY — Boundary County School District officials said 1,492 students started the 2024-25 school year in district schools with 1,392 being in brick-and-mortar schools.

This year, BCSD partnered with an online school collaboration with Overture Learning to provide additional education options for area families. The online school has filled its 100 spots with students in kindergarten through eighth grade. 

“We have 72 more students enrolled than we did at the beginning of last year and is comparable to our enrollment in 2022 and 2011, until we saw a dip in the Covid years,” BCSD Superintendent Jan Bayer said. “We have 115 more students than at the end of last school year.”  

Nine BCSD students transferred to the online school and the additional students are homeschooled locally.  

Three BCSD teachers, Melissa Bateman, Matt Dinning, and Robin Merrifield, are working collaboratively with Overture to assist parents and guardians.  

Bateman is a fifth-grade teacher at Valley View, Dinning is a special education teacher and Merrifield is the principal at Naples Elementary.