Enrollment increases by 216 in U-46

Elgin Area School District U-46 has tallied an increase of 216 occupied desks this year, bringing its total number of students to 41,303.

An official enrollment count, taken Sept. 30, was revealed for the first time at Monday night's school board meeting.

While the preschool program gained 107 students, the district lost 97 students in kindergarten through sixth grade. The high schools saw the most growth, and middle school enrollment was down overall.

Of the district's 40 elementary schools, Channing Elementary in Elgin and Timber Trails and Lincoln elementaries in Hoffman Estates saw the largest growth this year, adding more than 40 students each.

All have rates of low-income and limited-English speaking students that are higher than the district's average.

Horizon Elementary in Hanover Park and Sycamore Trails in Bartlett each lost more than 50 students.

The district's eight middle schools lost 146 students overall.

Canton Middle School in Streamwood lost 130 students, Kimball Middle School in Elgin 86.

Kenyon Woods in South Elgin gained 88 students, giving the school the highest enrollment of its peers at 1,064 students.

At U-46's high schools, enrollment jumped by 352 students, with the largest increase at South Elgin High School, 225 students.

Streamwood High School was the only one to see a decrease in enrollment numbers, with 31 fewer students.

According to the data, the number of special education students appeared to have doubled at the middle school level, with a jump from 341 to 624 students, and nearly tripled at the high school level, from 600 to 1,586 students.

Assistant Superintendent Lalo Ponce called those numbers "deceiving."

In the coming days, the district will be taking resource students, or those who require special education services like speech therapy for a fraction of the school day, out of the special education count, placing them into the general education count, Ponce said.

"Ratios of special education students appear to be about the same (as last year)," Ponce said.

The district will send its official count to the state by the end of the month.

Ponce declined to comment on whether the increasingly slow real estate market affected this year's growth.

"I'm not a Realtor, so I can't really say," he said.

"At the high school level, we have schools that are attracting families with their programs. I would attribute their growth to that."

The 2007-08 school year was the first year the district exceeded 41,000 students, Ponce said.

While officials consider crossing that threshold again a milestone this school year, "this is a far cry from those years where we grew by thousands," board President Ken Kaczynski said.