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closePuyallup numbers are in sync with low projection
Chris Albert
Projecting enrollment for the Puyallup School District year by year is a complicated guessing game. An educated guess, but a guess nonetheless.
“We try to take the information you have and make our best projections,” said Gary Frentress, district capital projects director.
Recently, a report of projections and enrollment numbers by district consultant W. Les Kendrick was presented to the Puyallup School Board.
Based on the October 2007 enrollment numbers, the district increased by 123 students this school year, bringing the district’s total enrolled to more than 21,500 students.
During the same time in 2006, the district recorded an increase of 276 students and in 2005 increased by 528 students.
The rate of increase is down but is within a few students of the district’s low projection, which they use for staffing purposes.
“If you can get that close then you’re doing pretty good,” Frentress said.
The district is expecting jumps in enrollment in the coming years with a significant increase in 2011 and 2012 because of record birth numbers in 2006, according to Kendrick’s report.
The 2007 increase is 0.6 percent from the year before, according to district consultant W. Les Kendrick’s report. The increase usually stays within 3 percent, with the exception being 1993 when the increase was 4 percent.
Although growth hasn’t continued to increase at the same rate, many of the schools are still over their permanent capacity, especially in the district’s south end.
It didn’t take too long for the newly opened Carson Elementary to grow beyond the 750-student capacity it was built for. This fall, enrollment was at about 800 students.
The newly opened Edgerton Elementary is at about 654 or about 100 under its capacity. While schools like Brouillet felt relief from the new school’s opening, Firgrove and Zeiger elementary schools have fewer students than last year, but are still over their permanent capacity.
Edgerton is expected to grow beyond permanent capacity in the next few years, Frentress said.
Opening the new schools happened just in time. In the case of Brouillet Elementary, which was impacted the most, the strain was at a breaking point, Frentress said.
“It got to the point where they couldn’t add portables anymore,” Frentress said. “(And) they are over their capacity so they would still have kids in portables.”
According to district numbers, the dozen elementary schools in the southwest region of the district have 592 more students than they were built to serve.
The district has more than 200 portables.
The difficulty with finding space for students isn’t in the classroom space, but rather the core areas of each school, like the cafeteria, gymnasium or bathrooms, Frentress said.
Those parts of the building were built to handle the schools’ permanent capacity.
In some cases the district brings in porta potties to handle bathroom concerns, Frentress said. For those other core area uses, the schools have to adjust their programs, such as adding more lunch periods to accommodate all the students or adjusting where and how often they teach courses like physical education.
Trying to manage the ever-changing number requires a lot of adjustments to be made.
“There’s a lot of shifting that has to happen,” Frentress said.