By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
When the school house doors opened Tuesday morning for the 2012-13 school year, the Lawrence Township public school district found itself swamped with an unusually large kindergarten class and certainly not one that it had been anticipating.
Kindergarten enrollment historically has been around 300 students, and that’s why school district officials were shocked when 357 students registered for kindergarten. They were placed in classrooms, but not necessarily in their neighborhood schools.
”We expected some growth, but not to this degree,” said Crystal Edwards, the superintendent of schools. “Demographic studies project what can happen, but the projections were not this high. We expected five or six more students (than usual).”
Ms. Edwards was at a loss to explain the increased enrollment. There are no new housing developments that would account for more children, she said, adding that “we are just making a home” in the district for the new students.
”We do our planning (based) on (an estimated) 300 students per grade,” Ms. Edwards said. “The surprise was the kindergarten class. We had to create an additional kindergarten class at the Eldridge Park School.”
The Eldridge Park School normally has three kindergarten classrooms, but the fourth one was added to handle the unexpected enrollment. The Ben Franklin and Lawrenceville elementary schools have four kindergarten classrooms apiece, and the Slackwood Elementary School has three kindergarten classrooms.
Although the kindergarten enrollment shot up to 357 students, grades 1 through 3 also have enrolled more than 300 children per grade. There are 311 children in 1st grade and another 311 in 2nd grade. The third grade enrollment is 327 children.
The average class size has grown, also, Ms. Edwards said. School district officials would like to limit classroom size to a maximum of 25 students, and some classrooms are approaching 23 or 24 students.
Meanwhile, school district officials expect to discuss the enrollment increase and seek input on how to address it from residents those with children in school and those who do not have children in school at the district’s Community Conversation, set for Oct. 17 at 7 p.m. at the Lawrence High School Commons.
”The goal right now is to make the education community the school board and families aware of the trend we are seeing of more than 300 children in the elementary grades,” Ms. Edwards said. “If this trend continues, there is some planning that needs to happen.”
Lawrence school district officials would like to discuss options with the community at the meeting, she said. Some districts have changed the boundaries so that students who would have attended a specific elementary school would have to attend a different one.
Other options include placing portable classrooms outside the school to create more classrooms, or giving up an art room and turning it into a classroom. The art teacher visits each classroom, rather than staying in an art-specific classroom.
”There are no foregone conclusions at this point,” Ms. Edwards said.