DATE: Friday, October 10, 1997              TAG: 9710100660

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B7   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: SUFFOLK                           LENGTH:   55 lines

SUFFOLK ENROLLMENT SLOWS, BUT SYSTEM STILL IS GROWING

Public-school enrollment didn't rise as much as expected this fall, and less than half as much as in recent rapid-growth, school-stuffing years.

No one's cheering, though.

That's because it's still going up - by 241 students at the official Sept. 30 count, the School Board was told at its meeting Thursday night. That's enough additional bodies to fill close to 10 classrooms, or all of either Florence Bowser or Robertson elementary schools, or half of most of the city's other elementary schools.

``We're still a growing system,'' Chairman Mark A. Croston said.

At 11,047 students, Suffolk's school system has expanded by 2.2 percent since last year.

That's less than half of the unexpected 5 to 7 percent annual growth of recent years. It left schoolyards filled with mobile classrooms and caused school officials this year to keep open aging Florence Bowser Elementary as a 16th school. It also set up confrontations between school and city officials over funding for school construction. More are expected - last month, the School Board requested that the City Council approve $142 million in new schools and school expansions in the next six years.

The fall count is used as a predictor for the March 30 count used by the state to divvy up funding. Usually, school systems can expect their spring count to be as low as 95 percent of their fall, as students leave because of sickness, dropping out or other reasons. Suffolk has been pushing closer to the 100 percent mark in recent years, and there's a chance the district actually will have more kids by next spring, said Assistant Superintendent Milton R. Liverman.

He said officials were surprised at this fall's head count; they had expected 11,200 children. They still do. ``We're enrolling every day,'' Liverman said.

``We believe, in the course of this year . . . our numbers will go up,'' Superintendent Joyce H. Trump said, citing all the houses under construction around Suffolk.

Plus Liverman expects the school system will pick up 40 to 50 students through a program to identify school-age children who haven't been enrolled by parents.

Liverman also told the board that projections show Suffolk's school enrollment in the next five years growing by 2,010 students, or 18.2 percent, to 13,057. But he warned that the school system has exceeded consultants' predictions in the past.

While the City Council rejected most of the School Board's requested capital budget this past year as too expensive for voters to swallow, it did approve money for one 800-student, $10 million elementary school to be built by next fall.

Construction on Mack Benn Jr. Elementary School on Nansemond Parkway is about two weeks ahead of schedule, the board was told Thursday. That is despite arson fires, vandalism and other crimes. KEYWORDS: SUFFOLK SCHOOLS

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