Schools Ready For The Numbers Game

Public school officials never know just how many kids will enroll, until the bell rings on the first day.

West Valley High School registered 40 new students on Monday, the day before school opened in West Valley School District. One grade school in the district, Ness Elementary School, signed up 25 children at the last minute. Pasadena Park Elementary added just one.

Officials are used to the flurry.

“I had a dad call this morning,” Brenda Way, secretary in the West Valley School District’s main office, said Tuesday. “He’s on his way over to enroll his kids now. He didn’t know where (the school) was or where they were going until this morning.”

This was the day school started.

Last-minute enrollments cast out ripples that include heavy brainstorming, more money from the state and sometimes last-minute hires.

Cleve Penberthy, West Valley High principal, was about to go into a meeting to plan for seven newly registered Russian immigrants. These students had transferred in from School District 81.

“They have special needs regarding their English. What can we do to provide a meaningful education experience for them? That’s problem-solving on the run,” Penberthy said.

Planning for this school year began seven months ago, in February, Penberthy said. The work included settling on an enrollment target.

“We landed on 806 students,” he said. It wasn’t scientific at all.”

Still, not a bad guess. West Valley High counted about 835 students by the end the first day; student numbers historically drop as the school year goes on.

Every new student means nearly $4,000 a year in additional funding from the state, said Jan Hutton, budget manager for Central Valley. The money goes everywhere: primarily teacher’s salaries, but also classroom materials, transportation and food service. As enrollments rise and fall through the school year, the state adjusts the flow of money.

At East Valley, where school started Wednesday, no last-minute hiring was expected by business manager Tom Crouch.

Rarely, a Spokane Valley school will find a big surprise in student numbers.

That happened last year, when the new Liberty Lake Elementary opened its doors. Authorities scrambled as enrollment rose from June’s prediction of 450 to a swollen 611. Three new teachers were hired. Extra chairs and desks were uncrated in a hurry.

As in past years, Central Valley High School is expecting a couple of last-minute hires this year. Principal Paul Sturm calls that practice nearly routine. He explains that the mobility of today’s high school populations always makes his enrollment predictions somewhat iffy.

West Valley School District expects 3,560 students this year, up about 140. Central Valley is ready for 10,200, about the same as last year; and East Valley predicts 4,698, about 100 more than last year.