The Woodland Park School District RE-2 board Wednesday night fielded for the first time at a regular meeting plans to merge Woodland Park Middle and High schools.

The meeting came after an announcement via email of the planned merger in January. According to the announcement, the merger is in response to shrinking enrollment numbers and the need to “improve the efficiency of building usage.”

According to Department of Education enrollment data, Woodland Park Middle enrollment has decreased from 391 students in 2022-2023 to 255 this year. Enrollment has also decreased at Woodland Park High.

Moving the remaining seventh- and eighth-graders currently at Woodland Park Middle would also make way for the growth of charter school Merit Academy which, according to directors at the Wednesday meeting, is expecting an enrollment of over 500 students next year.

The charter school will reportedly lease the entire middle school building for the upcoming 2024-2025 school year, adding three or four classrooms.

The merger comes just a year after the district decided to split up sixth-grade students among the district’s elementary schools. One parent in attendance at the Wednesday meeting expressed frustration at the lack of consistency that the newest merger would bring in the public comments section.

“You don’t care about stability for our kids,” she said.

District chief operating officer and District 20 school board director Aaron Salt attended the meeting to give a preliminary presentation on what the merger would look like. Showing a map of the building space, he showed where different areas would be repurposed to create separation between the high and middle school students both in instruction and in the pick-up and drop-off process.

Salt said that bringing middle schoolers into the high school building would consolidate and improve resources. He also said that athletics programs between the two schools have would not suffer, thanks to scheduling among coaches at existing athletics facilities.

“We have plenty of space,” he said.