Student enrollment stable in Valley Stream

Combined student enrollment in Valley Stream's four school districts.

The school year opened with a little more than 9,300 students in Valley Stream’s four school districts, consistent with last year’s enrollment.

While some districts on Long Island are experiencing declines in student population, enrollment in Valley Stream is steady and is projected to stay that way for several years.

District 24 opened the school year with 1,080 students, about 20 more than last year. Much of that growth was in kindergarten, as the district needed to added a third class at both the Brooklyn Avenue and William L. Buck schools.

Superintendent Dr. Edward Fale said the number of students, which has increased further since school opened on Sept. 7, is above the enrollment projected for this school year in a BOCES study. “My guess would be there was an increase in home sales,” Fale said, adding that projections are typically based on an area’s birth rate.

Despite the increase this year, Fale said enrollment has generally been steady in District 24. Over the last decade, it has had been between 1,050 and 1,090 students. Fale said the student population grew in the 1990s, declined slightly around 2000, then has been generally steady since.

District 30 opened the school year with 1,433 students, a decrease of about 15 students from last year. Superintendent Dr. Elaine Kanas said the district graduated a large sixth-grade class last year.

Kindergarten, she said, was an interesting situation this year. Enrollment at Forest Road School was low enough to only warrant one class there instead of two, Kanas explained. However, there was a late spike in enrollment at the Shaw Avenue kindergarten center, which serves students from both Shaw and Clear Stream Avenue.

Kanas said she able to move the second kindergarten teacher from Forest Road to open a seventh class at Shaw Avenue.

The last peak in enrollment was 1,502 students in the 2003-04 school year, and declined for several years until reaching a low of 1,398 children in 2008-09. Since then, it has been in the low- to mid-1,400s. Kanas said enrollment projections for the future show some grades will be up and some grades will be down, but student population in District 30 is expected to remain constant.

District 13’s population dropped by 50 students this year, from 2,158 to 2,108. However, Superintendent Dr. Adrienne Robb-Fund said that does not constitute a decline in enrollment because last year’s graduating sixth-grade class and this year’s kindergarten are close in size.

“The 50 kids are scattered in seven grades, across four schools,” she said, adding that the district needed only one less teacher this year.

The Valley Stream Central High School District gained only nine students this year, to 4,701 when school opened on Sept. 7, but enrollment is up about 100 students over two years.

Like in District 13, Heidenreich said the difference is not enough to say enrollment is anything other than steady, noting that the increase is spread out among six grades and four schools.

This year, the student population is up at Central and North high schools, and down a little at South High and Memorial Junior High.

Heidenreich said when planning for future enrollment, there are many factors that district officials must consider, such as new housing developments and how many people are sending their children to private school. Officials also look at the elementary districts, specifically focusing on the fifth and sixth grades as those classes are nearing entry into the high school district. With the younger grades, it’s “look and wait,” he said.

Long-term projections for the Central High School District are that the student population will remain static. “Where a lot of communities are seeing declining enrollment,” Heidenreich said, “we’re seeing stable enrollment.”

Student population in Nassau County as a whole is declining. According to Nassau BOCES, enrollment has been dropping since 2001, especially at the elementary and middle school levels. High school student population, reflecting the higher birth rate from the 1990s, was steadily increasing until reaching a peak two years ago, and has now leveled off.

In Nassau County, elementary school enrollment for next year is projected to be about 85,200 students. That is an 8.9 percent decrease from 2003, when there were more than 93,000 in grades K-5 in the county’s public schools.

By 2014, elementary enrollment is projected to fall even further, to 83,000 students. Nassau BOCES Superintendent Dr. Thomas Rogers said a reason for the decline is because the population of 20- to 40-year-olds has fallen by 12 percent in the past decade.

“We, as an island, are aging in population and we are losing people that are of family age and young professional age,” Rogers said. “This is a fundamental kind of shift in the population of Long Island.”