District grows by 500 students

The Mat-Su Borough School District's enrollment has topped 13,560 -- up nearly 500 students from last year.

The districted enrollment as of last week was 13,561, up 497 from last year and about 150 more students than the district anticipated.

"That's significant growth, and we're still working in a lot of areas," Interim Superintendent Bob Doyle told the Mat-Su school board last week. He said the district is continuing to target home-schooled students and those who are dropping out of education altogether.

"We will continue to grow for the next two weeks, and then we'll begin our count," Doyle said.

During October, the district counts the number of students at each school and those numbers are sent to the state to determine the amount of funding the district will receive. The 3.8-percent growth will mean more funds than originally budgeted.

District officials say the increase in students is fairly well spread throughout the district and public information specialist Kim Floyd said there don't appear to be any drastic staff shortages.

"We addressed those staff concerns early on," Floyd said, referring to the reassignment of positions before the first day of class for students.