All eyes on enrollment

Sixth-graders in Joe Schumpf’s class at the William L. Buck School are tightly configured in a small classroom.

Nick Ciccone/Herald

David LeWinter’s fifth grade class at the William L. Buck School has desks arranged in table configurations.

Nick Ciccone/Herald

• 
• 

Monitoring changes in school enrollment is an unceasing process for school administrations, and each of Valley Stream’s four districts is in a different stage of assessment unique to its needs. District 30 already has expansion plans in the works, and District 24 is considering how two new apartment buildings might impact its student population.

“We’re at a critical point right now for determining our needs,” said District 24 Superintendent Ed Fale. “Throughout the spring, we’re going to be discussing how we’ll be able to deal with that enrollment growth in conjunction with how we can deal with our current enrollment.”

In the past five years, enrollment in District 24 was at its highest in the 2012-13 school year, with 1,118 students. The number fluctuated by as many as 30, but has increased since 2014. It is expected to continue to grow in the next two years. As of November, the district had 1,097 students enrolled.

District 24’s uncertainty is centered on the additions of the Hawthorne Apartments, on South Cottage Street, and the Sun Valley Towers building, on Sunrise Highway. The Hawthorne’s 94 units include one- and two-bedroom apartments and are mostly rented, while the Sun Valley Towers’ 72 units also feature three-bedroom apartments. Management at both buildings claim they are targeting unmarried commuters and seniors — not couples with children — but Fale said that “that may not necessarily be what’s going to happen.

“We’re trying to get some kind of a grip on what kind of space we may need,” he said, “but what’s difficult is that we really don’t have an idea on who’s going to be moving into those units.”

Fale noted that, based on the district’s increasing free and reduced-price lunch population, incoming families are tending to have more children than the district was used to per household historically. He stressed that full classrooms present problems beyond lack of space. Charles Brocher, the district’s head of facilities, agreed.

“Capacity learning changes the style of education,” Brocher said.