New Richmond enrollment continues to climb

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Student enrollment numbers in New Richmond continue to climb, putting projections right on track for the 2012-13 school year.

“We’re just blowing the top off 4K,” Veilleux told the New Richmond School Board on Monday, Aug. 20. “It’s amazing.”

Veilleux said the district’s 4K enrollments started very slow, with about 180 students registered.

“We have a few concerns about that and it stayed that way for a while,” he said. “But it just started picking up and it’s almost gone ballistic.”

As of Friday, Aug. 16, the district had 251 registered in the 4K program. That’s the second biggest class in the district. The incoming kindergarten class is 255.

Other than the fifth grade and 11th grade levels, all classes have more than 200 kids registered, he said.

“Our numbers are right in the range,” he said. “We’re a little under what (Brian Johnston, district business manager) had projected in a couple cases, but when you add it up all together, he was budgeting 3,197 and we stand at 3,228.”

While the district has met its goals of enrolling at least 3,197 students, the 4K students only count as .6 full time equivalents (FTE), Veilleux said. That means the district’s goal of enrolling 3,108 FTE fell short by 27 students.

“It’s about a $90,000 drop in revenue,” he said. “We have accounted for that. We have not overestimated our revenues and underestimated our expenditures. We’ve been very conservative on the revenue.”

In terms of specific grade levels and specific buildings, Veilleux said the district is still working to decrease second grade class sizes.

“We have a little conundrum at the second grade level right now,” he said. “We are monitoring it very closely and we have a couple plans in place should those numbers continue to grow.”

“We have budgeted for an additional elementary teacher. Whether that would be at kindergarten right now or whether that would be at second grade, we haven’t decided,” Veilleux said. “Our numbers at Hillside in second grade are probably not acceptable.”

According to the district’s numbers, as of Aug. 16, second grade classes at Hillside Elementary had 25 students in each class. That’s compared to 22 students per class at Paperjack Elementary and 23 students per class at Starr Elementary.

“You don’t want to create another section if you don’t have to, but at some point in time you have to make a decision and just move ahead,” he said.

Veilleux said he’s working closely with Jeff Moberg, the district’s human resources director, and the three elementary principals to find solutions to the class size problems.

“It’s a very nice problem to have vs. the other way around,” he said.

Visit newrichmond-news.com to see the estimated class sizes and most recent enrollment numbers.

For the complete story, see this week's New Richmond News.

Tags: new richmond schools, new richmond, education