Watford City Schools - KXNet - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson

Watford City Schools

The school year has reached its halfway point across North Dakota.
Semester tests are completed and a new year is on the way.
In Watford City, plenty of students put pencil to paper for those tests -- the district is growing right along with the oil play.
Perry Olson takes us to the district our cameras visited earlier this year to see the growth first hand.

Watford City sits atop the Bakken.
That means oil, opportunity and kids.
(Steve Holen, Watford City Superintendent) "It's been a great challenge and certainly a district that had been in declining enrollment for quite some time and to see these numbers back up to where they used to be, right now we're probably where we were in the early 90's."
Steve Holen says so many new kids are enrolling in Watford City, their hand was forced, they had to expand.
Lots of hiring.
A new 30,000 square foot building project, mainly to handle the younger kids.
(Steve Holen, Watford City Superintendent) "About seventy percent of our new enrollment has been at the K-6 level. So there's no question, our largest class of 80 students right now is first grade."
The added pupils have meant added teachers, but landing teaching talent in the area is a challenge.
The cost of living has sky-rocketed, mainly with housing.
So Watford devised a plan: Government Surplus Housing.
Or what we might call: FEMA units.
They've been used with success.
(Steve Holen, Watford City Superintendent) "We try to provide those beginning level teachers, which is a lot of the new teachers we're getting, with a competitive salary to try to counter balance the cost of living which is occurring right now. And providing our own housing was one of the only ways that we could start to control that cost of living a little bit of an extent to be competitive with those other areas that are not seeing those kind of increases."
Those areas in western North Dakota are tough to find.
Almost every district is bustling.
(Steve Holen, Watford City Superintendent) "It has been incredibly busy, but it's a good busy."
The increase here has been incredible.
Compare the start of school last year to the start of this year, Watford City is up 171 students.
Perry Olson, KX News.