Ever-Growing Enrollments Spurs Summer of Construction for Brookline Schools

When Brookline's public schools opened their doors yesterday, they welcomed in more students than the town has ever seen before.

School officials estimate that first-day enrollment in just kindergarten through eighth grade hit 4,671 students yesterday, up 203 over last September's recording-breaking number. This fall's jump comes on top of several years of big growth in Brookline's student population and puts even more pressure on a school system already bursting at the seems.

"These are the issues we'll continue to wrestle with," said Superintendent Bill Lupini, who reported the early enrollment estimates at Tuesday's School Committee meeting.

To make room for the incoming classes, school building officials spent the summer partitioning off rooms, relocating offices and moving programs to make more classroom space across the system. In all, the schools found room for nine new classrooms before the start of class yesterday, according to Deputy Building Commissioner Charlie Simmons.

Simmons said the Lincoln, Driscoll, Baker, and Heath schools all had new classrooms built over the summer, as did the high school and Baldwin building. At the Driscoll School, crews converted two large classrooms originally built to accommodate three back to their original configuration, while at the high school, offices for the Brookline Early Education Program were moved into an unused greenhouse to clear up more classroom space.

The construction comes on top of a laundry list of routine painting and re-carpeting projects, especially in buildings damaged by last March's torrential rainstorms. Several schools were outfitted with repurposed equipment, including air-conditioning units and student lockers, salvaged from the Runkle School as it was being gutted in preparation for a major expansion and renovation project.

Though the schools have traditionally spent summer performing routing maintenance work, Deputy Superintendent Peter Rowe said construction crews have been spending more and more time readapting spaces for classroom use over the last four years. With this year's growth in enrollment, Brookline now has four schools with more than 600 students, and even its so-called "small schools," Driscoll and Heath, now have around 494 and 456 students, respectively, in kindergarten through eight grade.

And school officials expect those numbers to keep growing. Lupini said he expects the schools will have to make more classrooms appear out of thin air next year before expansion project at the Heath and Runkle school ease the pressure. But it won't be easy.

"It gets tougher every year," said Rowe. "We'll find [more classrooms], but you have to make choices and compromises every time you do."

First-day enrollment estimates are based on how many students show up for school on the first day of classes. Enrollment numbers for 10th through 12th grade were not available because those students started this morning.