By Lanie Callaghan and McKinzie Mangers, Editors 

The high school is within short distance of hitting maximum capacity, data presented to the school board shows.

The building is currently  at 84 percent capacity, and space is expected to become tighter since incoming classes are larger than outgoing ones.

Though the building technically has 16 percent capacity remaining, in order to reach full capacity, every classroom in the building would have to be full eight periods a day. Since many electives, honors classes and special education classes contain fewer than 30 students, space will become tight before full capacity is reached.

“There are a number of issues,” Principal Chip Hickman said. “The class sizes and the materials for the classes [are a challenge].”

KHS is up to 1,346 students this year, with roughly 337 students per grade level. These numbers are expected to continue to increase because the average class size in the middle school is 367; in the elementary school, it’s 387.

In this year’s eighth and seventh grade classes, there are 87 more students than in the curent junior and senior classes. By the 2014-2015 school year, the high school will have a approximately 1,433 students.

Business teacher Andrew Igras said he did not know the building was nearing capacity.

“I am shocked,” Igras said.

But senior John Lacey wasn’t surprised.

“I’m not shocked,” Lacey said. “The population is growing everyday.”

In 2003 and 2008, the high school saw its highest population growth with an increase of about 8.4 percent. Since the housing market declined in 2008, there has not been as steep of a population increase. This year, the high school population increased by 1.2 percent.