ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, August 22, 1996 TAG: 9608220041
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
NOTE: Above
Surging enrollment during the next decade, particularly in the Southeast and West, will require about 6,000 new schools and 190,000 more teachers nationwide, the Education Department said Wednesday.
About 51.7 million students will enter public and private schools this fall, surpassing the 51.3 million postwar baby boomers who were in school in 1971. A
``We are only at the midpoint of a long, slow, rising wave,'' Education Secretary Richard Riley said Wednesday in releasing state-by-state enrollment estimates. ``By the year 2006, America's schools will have to educate 54.6 million children - almost 3 million more than today.''
Enrollment is expected to rise during the next 10 years in 33 states. The enrollment boom, however, will not be seen in all areas of the country. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia are forecast to have enrollment declines by 2006.
A 9.8 percent increase is predicted for Virginia public elementary and secondary schools by 2006. California is expected to see the largest growth - 1 million within the next 10 years, an increase of 18 percent, according to the report, ``The Baby Boom Echo.''
``I think the important thing is that in September we're not going to turn children away. But you need to look at the numbers and believe them,'' said Mamie Starr, chairman of the Coalition for Adequate School Housing of California. ``The kids are out there. I can attest to it and more are coming.''
States forecast to record 11 percent to 19 percent increases in enrollment are: Delaware, California, Washington, Alabama, Hawaii, Alaska, Oregon and Maryland, the report said.
Elementary school enrollment began to rise in the mid-1980s as the children of about 76 million baby boomers - born between the end of World War II and 1964 - headed to school.
Elementary schools continue to feel enrollment pressure because the number of births in America, bolstered by immigration, has remained steady for four or five years.
The babies of baby boomers also will pack high schools in record numbers. Enrollment in public high schools is expected to rise 15 percent in the next 10 years, according to the department's report.
Enrollment in grades nine through 12 is expected to rise during the next decade by more than 20 percent in nine states - Virginia, California, North Carolina, New Jersey, Maryland, Nevada, Washington, Alaska and Massachusetts.
Timothy Dyer, director of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, said schools are responding to the overcrowding by dividing students into units of no more than 600 students, using personal progress plans to track individual student achievement and assigning each student an adult counselor.
The Clark County, Nev., school district expects to see 11,000 to 13,000 new students in each of the next five years. To meet demand, Superintendent Brian Cram says the Las Vegas district needs to add one classroom a day, or the equivalent of one elementary school a month.
``The bottom line is that across the nation and in Clark County we're falling behind,'' Cram said. ``The people who will suffer will be the children.''
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