This week, City Schools of Decatur released their latest enrollment levels and projections for next year as part of Superintendent Phyllis Edwards’ letter to the board for next week’s meeting.

As you can see above, enrollment levels are projected to increase by nearly 400 students from this year to next.  Then, yesterday, the Bill Banks of AJC reported that the Superintendent ” wants a joint meeting with the city government discussing the revival of three large apartment projects and their effect on city schools.”

According to the paper, “two developments totaling a projected 435 units figure to break ground next year, with a third, on the Callaway property, approximately two years away. Decatur schools anticipate total enrollment doubling to over 6,000 by 2018, but Edwards said these new apartments “don’t figure into our projections.” ”

An enrollment of 6,000 would be higher than CSD has ever encountered in its history. (See CSD growth chart from 2012 below.)

I’m guessing the 2018 projection assumes no deviations from current growth.

The chart above details student enrollment growth by grade in the City Schools of Decatur over the past year.

Even after removing the 62 enrollment student’s from the equation, growth is 10% higher than at the end of the last school year and 5% higher than projected.   Growth is not only occurring in the most talked about grade – Kindergarten – but also growing at a double-digit pace in 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 10th grade.  None of the three grades that experienced declines – 1st, 7th and 9th – come close to compensating for the growth in other grade levels.

Where are all these kids coming from?  In her note to the School Board prior to next week’s meeting – which is where this chart came from – Dr. Phyllis Edwards provides another layer of context…

…a good percentage are coming from out of state or out of the country. We are receiving applications from people who have bought homes in Decatur and have the paperwork in hand.

Also note that CSD originally projected that the kindergarten class for this year would decline from size of the 1st grade class .   However, the opposite is true and this year’s kindergarten class is not only bigger than the new 1st grade class, but any grade level.