Enrollment nudges up

• Graphic

Graphic

Talk about it

Very encouraging.

Those are the words used by Trevor Peterson to describe this year’s enrollment figures to board members of Alexandria School District 206 at Monday night’s regular school board meeting.

Peterson, the school district’s business director, was excited to share the numbers with board members and administrators.

From what the school district projected to the actual official enrollment count on October 1, there was an increase of 35 students – 3,890 students were projected and the actual number was 3,925.

October 1 is the required date enrollments have to be submitted to the state.

The overall enrollment for the current year is a boost, said Peterson, from the projections, which were calculated in February.

Peterson noted that the October 1 enrollment numbers are also an increase from the ending enrollment of last school year. At the end of the 2009-2010 school year, there were 3,878 students compared to this year’s student count, which is 3,925 – an increase of 47 students.

“What’s really exciting about the data is that our kindergarten numbers are stable,” said Peterson. “And we are seeing a high retention rate in the elementary grade levels and we are up at the secondary level. Retention is there in a good way.”

Peterson noted, however, that there could be one factor in the increase of students at the high school level – there was an increase of 25 in the number of students projected versus actual October 1 figures. That factor could be the number of post-secondary education option (PSEO) students.

Board Chair Dean Anderson asked Peterson when he expected to have more information about the number of PSEO students in the district and Peterson told him it should be sometime this week.

Peterson was unsure if the number of PSEO students would even affect the overall enrollment numbers. He told the board there are very few senior students who are full-time PSEO students, which means they wouldn’t be counted in the district’s overall enrollment numbers.

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