Increased Enrollment Has Lawrence Schools 'Full-Up'

Enrollment for the soon-to-begin school year is so high, particularly in kindergarten, that Lawrence Township public schools are running out of classroom space and district officials plan to seek input from the community about what should be done if the number of new students entering the district continues to rise in the coming years.

“We are full-up. We are literally out of classroom space below the high school,” township board of education member Leon Kaplan, who chairs the board’s Community Relations and Legislative Affairs Committee, said during the school board meeting held Monday evening (Aug. 13).

“Two years ago, most schools had small kindergarten classes of 18 [students] or fewer. Last year, several of them had 23 or more. This year we’re all maxed out,” Kaplan said, explaining that because of the increased enrollment a new kindergarten class has had to be added at Eldridge Park Elementary School.

District Superintendent Crystal Lovell explained that on average between 290 and 300 children are enrolled in kindergarten in Lawrence Township each year. Registration for the 2012-2013 school year began in January and, so far, 331 children are fully enrolled for kindergarten, she said.

That number does not include registrations that are not yet complete, and she said the district typically receives registrations right up until – and sometimes after – the first day of school.

As a result, the district has been forced to create a fourth kindergarten class at Eldridge Park, Lovell said.

At Monday’s meeting, the school board approved the transfer of a first-grade teacher from Lawrenceville Elementary School to teach that new kindergarten class at Eldridge Park. To allow for that personnel transfer, Lovell said, the number of first-grade classes at LES for the coming school year has been reduced from four to three.

She explained that the district tries hard not to have the number of students in any given class exceed 25 and noted that the number of incoming first graders specifically at LES allows the district to condense the students there into just three classes this year.

Lovell explained that the new kindergarten class at Eldridge Park will likely be filled with students from throughout the township and not just those who live in the immediate area of the school on Lawn Park Avenue.

“Right now it is more for students who haven’t yet registered for kindergarten and those moving into the district, regardless of where their ‘home’ school is, because there just isn’t any more room in their home school,” she said.

She said the placement of newly-enrolled students in other grades will also depend on where classroom space is available and not simply by which school is closest to them.

“With the other sections in the elementary grades, with our existing staff, we’re seeing [class] sizes are now approaching 23-24 where they used to be 18-19. So in some buildings, for example, their second grade may be filled and we may have to move new kids moving into the district to another building,” she explained.

“Right now, third grade is pretty large, so in two of our buildings third-grade class size is up to 23, 24, 25. So as we get new students to the district we may send them to the other buildings rather than their home school.”

She stressed that the district is trying to limit such placements to newly-enrolled students. Residents whose children are already registered with the district should not be affected.  “I don’t want people to think we’re going to pull existing kids out of school and put them there,” she said.

Lovell said it is hard to say exactly why enrollment this year is so high. “It’s not an easy thing to put your finger on,” she said, noting that enrollment does vary somewhat from year to year.  

Concerned that class size will continue to increase, the district plans to seek input from the community about how best to address the problem.

“So what we’d like to do when we have our next Community Conversation in October is engage the public in a discussion about the next step,” Lovell said. “If next year’s kindergarten comes in large and the one after that, then we’re going to have an issue because once they get to the Intermediate School there isn’t any place to put them because that building is filled to capacity. We’re thinking ahead, trying to engage people in thoughtful, meaningful conversations about looking at a potential problem.

“We’ll be spending this year, quite possibly, looking at our enrollment, talking about some potential solutions to the problem,” she said. “We’ve looked at things like, at one point, Eldridge Park as a fourth-grade school only. Slackwood and Eldridge are so small though. They hold about 250-plus students. We have 331 in kindergarten, so we couldn’t even fit every kid that’s in kindergarten in Slackwood right now.”

New modular classrooms are a possibility at some schools, but won’t work at others, she said.

“If I had the tool I’d put it in place right now. Right now we’re just kind of band-aiding [by sending new students to whichever school has room.] It’s a complicated problem. It’s always emotional when you try to redistrict and move a neighborhood [to a different school]. I think the best thing that we can do right now is get as much input from stakeholders as possible as to what to do,” Lovell said.

She said an exact date for the next Community Conversation has not yet been set. In addition to brainstorming how to address future overcrowding in the schools, district officials plan to use that meeting in October to update residents on the district’s long-term strategic plan.

School board member Michael Horan, during Monday’s meeting, agreed that the district needs to get the community involved in coming up with a solution to the space problem.

“We need to start talking to the public about that because if we’re starting to max out now we’re going to have to come up with some kind of solution for it,” he said. “And I think if we start getting the input through our community conversations ahead of time we’ll be much better placed for the future.”