Whitnall School District's Enrollment Trending Better Than Expected

As registrations for the 2012-13 school year continue to roll in over the final weeks of the summer, the administration is fairly certain of one thing:

More students will be in class come September than anticipated. And that’s a good thing.

Superintendent Lowell Holtz told school board members Monday that as of Aug. 7, enrollment numbers were already 34 students ahead of the district’s projections made three months earlier.

“And they are still coming in on a regular basis,” Holtz said. “Several people a day are coming in and out of the office. The numbers are rather fluid, but it’s a nice look at how it’s trending.”

Holtz said the four-school district’s projected enrollment was 2,180 students; after one week in August, it is already at 2,214.

“The more we can (add), the better off our revenue will be, and it has a positive impact on our budget,” Holtz said. “Hopefully we can stave off the declining enrollment issue.”

The numbers will continue to fluctuate through the official third Friday count in September. That count determines what the state uses as Whitnall's official enrollment for the 2012-13 school year.

The higher numbers have administrators considering adding a third session of kindergarten at Edgerton Elementary School and adding a teacher focused on math and reading to work with the district’s second graders.

“As those numbers grow, we’ll keep studying that,” Holtz said. “We hate to put someone in place and then have six kids leave the district. We’ll try to delay the action as long as we can.”

Edgerton principal Chris D’Acquisto said his school is prepared for the third session of kindergarten, something that was anticipated that determined whether students went to his school or Hales Corners Elementary.

“Our projections are becoming realities,” he said.

Administrators anticipate even more registrations over the next few weeks, now that going back to school is on the minds of parents and the district’s secretary staff has returned from summer break.

“It was this time last year when my kindergarten exploded,” she said. “It was 95 (students) and it went up to 110.”