As Marion County Public Schools moves forward with plans for a new elementary school in Belleview, one of the campuses serving as a model for the project is already operating above capacity.
Ross Prairie Elementary opened in August 2025 as one of Marion County’s two newest elementary schools. By the 100th day of its first school year, the school had 899 students with a capacity of 873, putting it at 103% capacity, according to Marion County Public Schools’ 2025-26 100th Day enrollment and capacity report.
The numbers are noteworthy in Belleview, where MCPS is planning to consolidate Belleview Elementary and Belleview-Santos Elementary into a new campus designed for approximately 950 students. MCPS has allocated $70 million for the Belleview Elementary replacement project, with another $4.6 million identified for furniture, bringing the planned investment to approximately $74.6 million.
The district has said the new Belleview school will reuse the “footprint and features” of Ross Prairie and Winding Oaks elementary schools. Some in the Belleview community have questioned whether the planned capacity will be enough to accommodate the area’s growth.
Those concerns were recently raised in a Letter to the Editor published by the Voice, which noted that Belleview Elementary and Belleview-Santos have historically had a combined enrollment greater than the planned capacity of the replacement school.
Attendance boundaries are expected to change as part of the consolidation, and rezoning could send some students who currently attend the two Belleview schools to other campuses. The opening of Ross Prairie and Winding Oaks involved similar changes. MCPS said the schools were constructed to address growth in southwest Marion County, and their opening resulted in rezoning affecting Belleview, Belleview-Santos, Marion Oaks, Sunrise, Legacy, and Saddlewood elementary.
Enrollment is not the only concern some in the community have expressed about using the same basic design in Belleview. Questions have also been raised about the amount of space dedicated to physical education and how the design functions when large groups of students cannot be outside because of extreme heat or thunderstorms. Plans released for the new Belleview campus do not include an indoor gymnasium. Instead, project documents call for a covered play court, playgrounds and physical education facilities.
Other concerns center on what happens if enrollment exceeds the new Belleview school’s capacity. Additional portable classrooms require space, and residents have questioned whether future expansion could come at the expense of areas used for physical education, recreation or other outdoor activities.
Those concerns do not mean Belleview will experience the same enrollment pressures as Ross Prairie. It does, however, offer a real-world example of the design Belleview is preparing to borrow from. The school was built to provide additional capacity in a growing portion of Marion County. Less than a year after opening, it was already at 103%.
