Lynn school enrollment numbers up

LYNN – The Lynn Public School system is suffering from growing pains and a space crunch as enrollment numbers continue to climb.Enrollment has increased by 100 students in the last year and 500 in the year before that, and Superintendent Catherine Latham doesn’t see it slowing down anytime soon.”We’re seeing a growth spurt we haven’t seen in years,” she said.The school system has 951 sixth-graders, 983 seventh-graders and 979 eighth-graders, but it is the elementary school levels that are more telling. The all-day kindergarten program has 1,330 students. First grade jumps slightly to 1,356, second grade includes 1,196 students and third grade is filled with 1,175 students.”You can see that it’s really young children coming into the city,” she said. “We are really going to need elementary schools.”Latham said she has been shopping for space to try and alleviate some of the more serious overcrowding issues, which are largely focused in the downtown area.The Tracy School on Walnut Street has classes with 31 and 32 students, Brickett on Broad Street has classes with 30 students and the Ford has classes with similar numbers, Latham said.View enrollment statistics and demographics for Lynn Public SchoolsSchool Committee Secretary Thomas Iarrobino said that if principals have had classes with 32 students they could split them, but “they’ve lost that luxury because they’ve run out of space.””It’s no secret it’s in the neighborhoods that also have a lot of multi-family homes,” she said.Latham said schools in the more suburban neighborhoods, such as Lynn Woods, Sewell-Anderson and even Lincoln-Thomson are not seeing the same jump in numbers.The Sisson Elementary School on Conomo Avenue is pressed for space but the School Department rented space from the Lutheran Church around the corner and moved the pre-K, which allowed the fifth grade to expand.Latham admitted that it makes greater sense to move pre-K and kindergarten classes than it is fifth-graders. Fifth-graders, by and large, have spent their early years in the one school, moving them out would isolate them, she said.Whatever changes that might be made to alleviate the overcrowding, Latham said they won’t be made until September, and everything will remain the same for the rest of the 2012-13 school year.As high as the numbers are climbing, Latham said they still haven’t reached the level they were at in 2000 when the Lynn schools peaked with about 15,500 students. Iarrobino said the enrollment is just under 15,000 now, with 14,700 students.After 2000, enrollment steadily declined until 2009 when it started to climb once again.”State-wide they went and state-wide they’re coming back,” Latham said.She attributes this new wave of students not only to the city’s growing immigrant population but also to families that left the city but are returning.She points to MCAS scores where the city ranked number one among the nine urban districts in English language arts and science, and ranked second in math.Iarrobino said suburban Boston is also becoming an expensive place to live with rents reaching toward $3,000 a month in places like Somerville and Charlestown.”Lynn has neighborhood schools that kids can walk to that are safe,” he said.”We’re at the top of the urbans for MCAS results; that’s very positive,” Latham added. “And there are still single-family homes with yards that can be had.”When asked if she thought the elementary school enrollments would hold steady or even increase by the time the kids hit middle school, Latham admitted there is no way to really know.”But we are predicting that they will grow even larger,” she said.Chris Stevens can be reached at [email protected].