Official Sept. 30 enrollment documents provided for tonight’s meeting of the Falls Church School Board show enrollment for all four of the city’s schools to be at a 45-year high. This fall’s total enrollment of 2,145, with an additional 33 counting pre-kindergarten, tops last year’s total of 2,049, representing a 4.5 percent increase in a single year, and is higher than the projections of either FCCPS Financial Director Hunter Kimball (who predicted 2,133) and the projection of the school-commissioned Dewberry Study (of 2,046).
The total enrollment is the highest since the 1964-65 school year, when there were 2,293 students in the city’s four schools. The city schools went from a 1964-65 high water mark to a precipitous decline in enrollment, bottoming at 1,101 in 1985-86, and has steadily grown since that year. However, the single year dump in enrollment this year, by 94 students, is the second highest in the system’s history, exceeded only by the growth of 134 (from 1,541 to 1,675) between the 1998-99 and the 1999-00 school years.
The biggest jumps from last year to this include by 25 students in kindergarten, 25 students in the third grade, 20 students in the sixth grade, 19 students in the 10th grade and 32 students in the 12th grade.
The school board was slated to discuss these numbers with Superintendent Dr. Toni Jones at its meeting tonight.
