When trustees of the Menlo Park City School District put the $91 million facilities bond measure on the June 6 ballot, they expected that enrollment in its four schools would swell by about 460 students by 2015.
Already, the kids are coming.
It’s only the first week in April, yet more kindergartners are registered now for the next school year than had registered for this year — and this year’s crop is sizeable.
That means that if the district were to maintain the same number of kindergarten classes for the 2006-2007 school year, the classes would already be full. Yet, more kindergartners are expected to enroll before school opens in August.
Superintendent Ken Ranella told trustees at their April 5 board meeting that projections indicate a need for an additional kindergarten classroom at Laurel School and possibly another one at Oak Knoll. There also may be need for additional staff and costs as enrollment grows, he said.
“The trends we were talking about this year are here now,” said Trustee Nancy Serrurier, after the meeting. “Grade sizes of the lower grades are getting bigger, and as the students move through the grades, the school district will be much larger than the past decades.”
This scenario appears to be a repeat of last year, when portable classrooms were moved on the campuses to make room for two more kindergartens. This year Laurel has eight kindergartens; Oak Knoll, five. Class sizes are a maximum of 20 students under the state’s class size-reduction program that helps fund smaller classes in primary grades.
Superintendent Ranella presented two options last week for trustees to consider:
• Add an additional kindergarten class at Laurel that would increase the school’s enrollment to 493 students and house 178 kindergartners in nine classes. Under this option, Oak Knoll’s kindergarten enrollment would be 120 students.
• Add an additional classroom at Oak Knoll, which would then have seven kindergarten classes with a total of 138 students, which would increase enrollment to about 700 students. This option would reduce Laurel’s kindergarten enrollment to 160.
The new information suggested that the district would have to move sooner rather than later to add more students to Encinal, the grade 3-5 school housed on the largest of the four school sites, and with the lowest enrollment.
Under an earlier district reconfiguration proposal, Encinal would become a K-5 school and Laurel would continue as a K-2 school. To implement this type of plan, school attendance boundaries would have to be shifted to bring more students to Encinal and cap the enrollment at Oak Knoll.
The discussion is likely to continue at the next regular school board meeting on Wednesday, May 10.
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