Lynn's Lower Grades Still Seeing Increasing Enrollment Numbers

Last year, we looked at enrollment figures at the lower grades levels (Pre-K through Grade 3) for the 2011-12 school year which indicated that the lower grade levels in Lynn were seeing considerable increases in enrollment numbers for these grades. Here is data from the current school year.

	2008-09	2009-10	2010-11	2011-12	2012-13
PK	242	245	233	266	270  (+4)
K	1036	1120	1102	1235	1295  (+60)
1	1109	1156	1217	1228	1364  (+136)
2	1051	1075	1123	1182	1195  (+13)
3	1068	1017	1051	1063	1161  (+98)

Enrollment data for the 2012-13 school year still shows that Lynn is seeing increasing numbers in the lower grades. The first grade saw the biggest increase from the previous year with 136 more students in 2012-13 than in 2011-12. Other school districts similar to Lynn are also seeing substantial increases in enrollment at the lower grade levels. Fall River, for example, saw a 15% increase in the number of kindergarten students from 2011-12 to 2012-13.

Lynn's kindergarten enrollment has increased 25% since the 08-09 school year. 

Kindergarten enrollment figures, however, vary at the individual school level with Cobbet enrolling the most kindergarten students (113) and Fallon the least (2).

Last year we also looked at how the enrollment totals for Lynn's most populated schools changed considerably from school year 10-11 to school year 11-12. The opening of the Washington STEM School this year was initiated, in part, to hopefully curb some of the overcrowding at three of these schools (Connery, Harrington, and Cobbet).

	2011-12	2012-13
Cobbet	682	607 (-75)
Connery	606	592 (-14)
Ford	605	617 (+12)
Harrington	639	595 (-44)
Ingalls	639	655 (+16)
Breed	1257	1200 (-57)

Here we see that those three schools targeted in terms of overcrowding reduction have decreased enrollment figures from the previous year. Cobbet saw the largest drop in student enrollment with 75 less students from 2011-12. More significantly, the number of schools with kindergarten enrollments over 100 has decreased from 5 in 2011-12 (Cobbet, Connery, Ford Harrington, and Ingalls) to 3 in 2012-13 (Cobbet, Connery and Ford). Harrington, for example, has 41 fewer kindergarten students than the previous year bringing its enrollment at this grade level down from 139 to 98. Ford was the only one of the elementary schools listed here which saw an increase in the number of kindergarten students (+5). Additionally, though not specifically targeted in terms of enrollment reduction, Breed Middle School also saw a drop in student enrollment. On the other hand, both Ingalls, which interestingly saw a 24% decrease in kindergarten enrollment, and Ford continued to see their overall enrollment numbers increase.

Overall, the Lynn Public School District currently has an enrollment of 14,139 students, an increase of 408 students from the previous.

*All Data Taken from: www.doe.mass.edu