Enrollment under projection

MAT-SU -- Two days into the 2003-2004 school year, the Matanuska-Susitna School District student numbers are nearly 700 shy of the projected numbers for this year.

"It could be that we don't meet projection this year," said George Troxel, assistant superintendent of instruction. "It's too early to tell."

The district's projected number of students is 14,171; so far only 13,472 have enrolled. Chief school administrator Bob Doyle attributes the lower number to a number of different factors, including the district's strict policy on counting a student as enrolled.

A student's paperwork must be completely filed before a school can count that student as enrolled. This policy is being enforced after last year, when some schools miscounted students due to lack of sufficient paperwork.

"My hope is when we are all done with this, these will be bullet-proof numbers," Doyle said.

Until the numbers are finalized and the projected number is either reached or missed, the administration has promised to approach the hiring of new teachers carefully. While 700 students may appear to be a large discrepancy, Doyle and Troxel said to remember that kindergarten had yet to start, and home school students are historically slower to register.

"We fully expect the [home school] and correspondence students to bring in another 500 students," Troxel said.

According to a report from the school district, correspondence has 365 less students than projected, home school has 166 less than projected, and Mid-Valley High School has 143 students less than projected. Doyle said Mid-Valley is expected not to reach projection, while the correspondence and home schools are expected to meet projections during the next month.

Wasilla High School has 139 more students than projected, bringing the total number to 1,114 students; the building capacity of Wasilla High School is 1,211 students.