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ST. CHARLES COUNTY — The region’s fastest-growing public school district is nestled among the endless rows of corn and soybeans in eastern St. Charles County.

A housing and population boom over the last two decades has transformed the Orchard Farm School District with new buildings and new programs — robotics, added music classes, a new auditorium, two new wrestling teams — while it sticks to its agricultural roots with an active chapter of FFA (formerly Future Farmers of America).

The district, located north of Highway 370, stretches from the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers west toward the Golden Eagle Ferry Road. Its enrollment has mushroomed by 21% in the past five years, with nearly 2,400 students now, a growth rate that ranks near the top in Missouri.

“There’s so many more people here now that it is really hard to not find your little niche or people that you fit in with,� said Ruthy Dunkmann, a senior at Orchard Farm High School.

No longer are the majority of Orchard Farm’s students coming from farm families. Instead, they live in growing suburbs. The district covers 140 square miles, but about 90% of the student body lives within the few square miles surrounding the district’s new high school campus.

Orchard Farm’s flourishing enrollment numbers are tied to the construction of New Town and Charlestowne, the large-scale residential developments in St. Charles that have added hundreds of homes in the last 20 years.

“These houses — we are building, building, building. We’ve got the land, we’ve got the houses and the houses bring the kids,� said LaNikka Blackmon-Forrest, a real estate agent in New Town and an Orchard Farm district parent.

More than 2,880 homes have been built in the area since 2004, with more likely on the way. Developers say they plan to add at least 800 new homes over the next decade, depending on economic factors.

In response, the district has undertaken its own building boom: a new 250,000-square-foot high school opened in January 2024; the early childhood education center is being expanded for the second time since 2016; and a third elementary school is set to open next year.

The growth at Orchard Farm stands in contrast to many St. Louis area school districts that have seen enrollment declines in recent years. According to data compiled by the Post-Dispatch, only eight of the 28 school districts in St. Louis city, St. Louis County and St. Charles County now exceed their pre-pandemic 2020 enrollment: Bayless, Ladue, Lindbergh, Pattonville, Ritenour, University City, Wentzville and Orchard Farm.

No other district added as many students or saw as big of a percentage increase as Orchard Farm. The district has also become more racially diverse, with the percentage of non-white students growing by 6% in the past five years.

“For years, Orchard Farm was this location that was undeveloped and a bit of a diamond in the rough because people really didn’t know where we were,� said Superintendent Wade Steinhoff. “I guess you could say that people have discovered this little diamond in the rough.�

Rural roots

The Orchard Farm School District is the product of a bygone era when one-room or two-room schoolhouses dotted eastern St. Charles County.

In 1959, voters in those one-room schoolhouse districts voted by a wide margin — 89% to 11% — to merge into a single district. Steinhoff’s grandfather was a big supporter of the merger and sat on Orchard Farm’s first school board.

Back then, the district had an enrollment of 565 students and spanned 118 miles.

Over the years, it faced its share of challenges. Repeated flooding along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, for example, decimated West Alton and Portage Des Sioux, the population centers that were once the backbone of the school district.

That trajectory started to change with new home construction along the western side of the district, toward St. Charles city.

“Fifteen years ago we were half the size of what we are today,� Steinhoff said. “Fifteen years ago, we were small, rural. You’d have to drive through cornfields just to see any of our schools.�

Today, those farms have been replaced with new homes.

Some parents describe Orchard Farm as a “throwback district,� reminding them of the schools they attended. Others say the “intentional community� of New Town — with its green spaces, communal mail rooms and varying architectural styles — has fostered a sense of community among out-of-state transplants and former St. Louis County residents who now call the area home.

Ronnie Lane moved back to New Town to ensure that his son, Ayden, would start kindergarten at Orchard Farm Elementary School. Lane’s family moved into the Orchard Farm district years before, after he’d graduated from McCluer High School in Florissant, but his brother and sister attended Orchard Farm schools. Lane later moved out of the district, but came back when he had kids of his own.

“It definitely seemed, even back then, that growth was going to happen,� Lane said.

Zachary Thomas, of Florissant, is eager to move into the neighborhood after seeing his daughter, Adriane, flourish in the district’s pre-kindergarten program. Adriane’s mother, an Orchard Farm graduate herself, lives in New Town.

After school last week, father and daughter headed to a neighborhood playground, where Adriane recounted her school day, which included coloring, learning numbers and counting.

“You can just tell how much she enjoys being here,� Thomas said. “And if she feels good about school, then I feel good about it, too.�

Room to grow

Orchard Farm had about 500 students in its high school just over a decade ago. By next fall, the district anticipates enrollment to reach 800 students.

The high school has room to grow: It can accommodate up to 1,000 students — and is designed to be expanded for another 1,000.

The district also restructured its elementary schools and middle school to give them room to add students. The elementary schools now serve only kindergarten through fourth grade, while fifth- and sixth-grades are together on the middle school campus. Seventh- and eighth-graders moved into the old high school.

The district financed the building improvements and new construction through a series of bond issues, with no tax increases, that have passed by wide margins.

The new high school was approved by voters in 2020 by a 20-point margin. Prop. E, the district’s most recent ballot measure for the new elementary school, was approved by voters in April 2024 by 44-point margin.

“We feel like we are in pretty good shape to not have to build a new school in the next 10 years, but we will make additions or renovations,� Steinhoff said.

The district is not likely done growing yet. Developers are already working to buy chunks of farmland, potentially bringing hundreds of more homes into the district.

“Based on the last update from the builders, they’ve got five to six more years of steady building ahead of them on the property they are working on now,� Steinhoff said.

Life at ‘The Farm’

Today, the district offers courses in areas like robotics and has doubled its music faculty. Students can study culinary arts, pharmacy, computer science and nursing. A partnership with St. Charles Community College allows students to graduate high school with an associate’s degree, too.

The offerings come as Orchard Farms continues to honor its agricultural roots. In addition to being the only St. Charles County district with an active FFA chapter, an agriculture-based student leadership organization, the district plans to expand its popular plant science courses to the junior high school.

Outside of the classroom, sports opportunities have included new high school boys and girls soccer teams, and new boys and girls wrestling teams. This spring, the school fielded its first boys volleyball team.

The Orchard Farm Eagles used to compete in the Eastern Missouri Conference, a collection of small to mid-size northeast Missouri schools. The district left that conference about a decade ago for the Gateway Athletic Conference, facing much larger schools, such as St. Charles High School and Wentzville’s Holt and Liberty high schools.

Current students have embraced their roots at “The Farm,� a name now printed on the home jerseys for many of the teams. For years, fans of opposing St. Charles County teams have donned overalls and camouflage clothing to mock the school’s rural roots. The home crowd sports green — with newer fans wearing a darker shade than Orchard Farm’s original kelly green. The team color was changed several years ago.

“We all look at it as something that we are proud of, we’re proud to be from The Farm,� said Ruthy Dunkmann, a senior who plays basketball and also is a pole vaulter on the track team.

Dunkmann has been a student in the district since freshman year, when she transferred from a nearby parochial school. She says it was always the plan for her to attend Orchard Farm, where her family attended for generations.

“I come from a very rural family,� Dunkmann said. “And I just have loved seeing the way that Orchard Farm connects everybody, whether they are from the town or from farms. People genuinely come together and I really hope that it stays that way.�

Drew Bextermueller graduated from the high school in in 1997 and today has three kids in the district. He said administrators understand the legacy of the district.

“With growth, you can either resist or embrace it and I think our district as a whole has embraced it,� Bextermueller said. “We may not be as small anymore, but I think we have a group of kids who know what it means to be from the ‘The Farm’ and to be proud of it.�

Josh Renaud of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.