The Coupeville School District is welcoming a positive surge in enrollment this fall.
A count this month revealed 945 students, which halted a trend of declining enrollment and is the highest number of students in the school district since the 2011-12 school year.
Coupeville’s enrollment had been mostly on a steady decline for the past 10 years.
“It is great news that our enrollment is again growing,” Coupeville superintendent Jim Shank said. “We are very pleased with this development. However, growth creates a different sort of challenge as class size can grow and become larger than was anticipated when we set the budget. We are working through the challenges.”
Transfers and new families helped account for the growth.
“Generally, it was kind of a smattering of a little bit of this and a little bit of that that gave us a lot more kids and we’re happy about that,” Shank said.
The enrollment of 55 kindergarteners created the need for a third class and the hiring of another teacher.
Coupeville is offering full-day kindergarten, five days per week this fall.
Numbers provided at the most recent school board meeting Sept. 28 revealed class-size averages at Coupeville Elementary School of 18.3 students in kindergarten, 16.7 in first grade, 20.0 in second grade, 27.7 in third grade, 20.3 in fourth grade and 29.0 in fifth grade.
“The greatest pressure points are clearly in third and fifth grade,” Shank said.
The high school and middle school’s switch to a new master schedule this fall has created some bottlenecks in some classes that administrators are trying to sort out, Shank said.
Shank said that any classroom with more than 30 students gets the attention of administrators.
There are several high school and middle school classes with at least 30 students, including sustainability (36 students), creative writing (36) and middle school robotics (32).
“We have received a good number of class-size reduction relief requests and we are responding to those accordingly,” Shank said. “We are looking for solutions as they present themselves. Refinements are in progress. Some of it takes creativity.”
