As the 2009-2010 school year heads into its spring phase, Everett’s public school system is experiencing growing pains.
With each passing week throughout the entire school year so far, the school population has increased.
School officials monitoring the situation are convinced the upward swing in school population is going to continue unabated leading to a moment of truth for the city which will shortly run out of space for all the public school children entering the system.
The total number of public school students officially enrolled here on March 5 stood at 6134.
“Four days later, that number had increased by 8,” said Assistant Superintendent Dr. Tom Stella.
Dr. Stella revealed that new student admissions to the system are running at about 30 per month since the beginning of the year.
“A total of 95 students have enrolled in the Everett Public Schools since January 15,” he said. “Seventeen of those students are from Haiti,” he added.
In addition, Dr. Stella detailed that 275 students have transferred from one Everett public school to another, 613 have transferred out of the Everett Public Schools while a total of 1398 students have enrolled through the Parent Information Center.
That number exceeded by 230 students the 1164 students who enrolled last year.
Bottom line, Everett’s Public School population is growing rapidly from month to month.
As administrators begin to look at school year 2010-2011, concerns are mounting about a school population larger than the present system can reasonably accommodate.
If the present growth spurt remains unchanged, Everett’s public school administrators will need to find another 500-600 seats for next year.
This would be the rough equivalent of filling another Webster School or a Whittier School, for example.
Although building a new school would be out of the question at this time, accommodating the students without interrupting the general flow of the educational process is what will matter to school officials, according to Stella.