ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, September 5, 1996 TAG: 9609050069
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER STAFF WRITER
A few days before a school year starts, the phone begins ringing off the hook in the public information office for Roanoke schools.
Parents ask where their children should attend school. Some have moved into the city from outside the Roanoke Valley during the summer. Others have changed addresses within the city or valley.
Some have kindergartners who will be attending school for the first time.
Some have just waited until the last minute to check on the school where their children should enroll.
At the schools, the busiest place on opening day is the office, which often is filled with students and parents waiting to register their children.
At Roanoke's Morningside Elementary School on Tuesday morning, 10 students were registered during the first two hours after city schools opened for the year.
At Roanoke Academy for Mathematics and Science, school officials set up tables in a room off the lobby to register children who were attending the school for the first time.
Several parents and students waited in the office at Addison Middle School to enroll in the aerospace magnet program.
The scene was similar at many schools in Roanoke, Salem and Roanoke County as the year began.
Enrollment at some schools is higher than projected.
"There are always surprises on opening day," said Ned Olinger, principal of Roanoke's Virginia Heights Elementary School. "The key to it is being flexible. It's just part of education."
In Roanoke County, the enrollment is 121 more than predicted and 245 above the first day's attendance last week when schools opened before Labor Day for the first time in several years.
When county schools opened Aug.26, attendance was 13,647, which was 124 less than the projected enrollment of 13,771. But Tuesday, the first day after Labor Day, the county's attendance was 13,892.
James Gallion, assistant superintendent, said students were returning from vacations that were scheduled before the county decided to open schools before Labor Day.
"Our experience has been that if you start schools before Labor Day, there'll be some who won't come until after the holiday," Gallion said Wednesday.
"You always get that. And there are a few who come in a day or so and wait until after Labor Day to come back," he said.
Still, Gallion said, the county's attendance was "pretty stable" last week and close to the 13,647 recorded on the first day.
Gallion said the county gained 29 kindergartners during the first week - from 1,013 to 1,042.
"That's the hardest grade to predict. With kindergartners, you don't know if you have them registered," he said. "A lot of parents wait until the last week or the first day of school to register them."
Students in other grades also move during the summer and show up unexpectedly at schools on the first day.
The U.S. General Accounting Office said one-sixth of the nation's third-graders have attended at least three schools since starting first grade.
Officials at an elementary school in Falls Church said nearly a fourth of the students had moved in the last year.
Gallion said Roanoke County doesn't keep statistics on the mobility rate, but the changes balance out.
"You have about as many leaving as coming in," he said. "Normally, they tend to cancel each other out."
No enrollment figures for the new year are available for Roanoke schools, which opened Tuesday, because only one-third of the kindergartners attend each day for the first three days. But student mobility and delays in registration are expected to affect enrollment, said Mary Hackley, director of elementary education.
"Even though school offices are open during the summer and we publicize the need to register kindergartners and others who have not attended, some parents wait until the first day of school," she said.
Hackley said student mobility varies within the city. Some schools are in neighborhoods with rental complexes, including federally subsidized housing communities, which have high turnover.
"Historically, we have some schools where a lot of children move in and out, but in other schools, we experience very little change in the students," she said.
Hackley said officials are still gathering data on student mobility, and she declined to provide rates for specific schools.
But Hackley said most of the student transfers occur either at the beginning of the school year, around Christmas or New Year's Day, or during the spring.
Educators say frequent moves, particularly during the school year, hinder learning for all students, not just transfers, because teachers must spend more time on review rather than covering new material.
High student mobility also can cause test scores to drop because it disrupts the curriculum.
Schools in Houston and Charleston, W.Va., have begun tutoring programs and year-round schedules to deal with the problems arising from high student turnover.
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