Fewer kids in kindergarten

For a second consecutive year the Unit 1 School District anticipates a smaller class of kindergartners when a new school year begins in August.
Preliminary enrollment for the 2019-2020 school year is at 115, down five students from one year ago and 25 kids from spring 2017.
School officials say kindergarten enrollment numbers will go up by the time classes begin in August, but if the trend continues the number of students reporting will still be at a 10-year low.
“If you look at historical data and you take the average of how many kids we’ve grown from the children tested to the August enrollment it is just 15, which would put us as 130 kids next year,” Superintendent Dr. Kent Bugg said.
The number of students who pre-register during the school’s annual kindergarten roundup in the spring and the actual August enrollment shows large fluctuations up until the last three enrollment periods.
The district’s largest kindergarten class in the past nine years came during the 2013-2014 school year. Pre-enrollment had 128 students heading to school, but when classes began in August the number of kids in class bloomed to 164.
The district saw its biggest increase in enrollment numbers during the 2009-2010 school year when 47 students were registered between spring and fall.
When big shifts in enrollment numbers occur like that, the district often finds itself adding sections and hiring a teacher at the last minute. That’s something the board wants to avoid.
There are currently seven sections of kindergarten, according to Bugg. Given the projected kindergarten numbers for next year, he’s been debating if that number should be cut to six.
The superintendent said the district tries to keep its kindergarten class numbers at 20 students or below. If the numbers hold true at 130 kids in August, then it would put classes size at about 18 kids per classroom.
Rather than cutting back on the number of classrooms and possibly being faced with a larger influx of kids at the last minute, Bugg is recommending the board maintain the seven sections of kindergarten.
“We’ve had board discussion in the past of the issues we’ve had when we try to hire a last-second teacher and we’ve never been very successful with that,” Bugg said.
Even though he’s recommending keeping things status quo, he doesn’t rule out future reductions in the number of sections offered.
“We are now going to have two years in a row of having around 130-132 kids. As you know, as our kids move through the system we have a little higher class sizes as we move forward, so kindergarten we try to stay at 20 or below and we start to creep those numbers up. If these enrollment numbers stay the same as these kids move through our system into second, third grade we will potentially have reductions in sections coming as these kids move up through the system,” Bugg said.