Osseo School District Kindergarten Enrollment Exceeds Expectations

A full-day kindergarten option at several schools appears to be paying off for the .

Preliminary enrollment numbers, , for the 2011-12 school year were presented to the District 279 School Board at the Oct. 18 meeting.  With those numbers came news that more kindergarten students are enrolling in the district than projected.

The district initially thought about 1,590 kindergarten students would enroll for the 2011-12 school year. As of Oct. 1, the number of enrolled kindergartners was at 1,624, according to Assistant Superintendent Kim Riesgraf.

“We see some good news in our kindergarten enrollment. Not only are we above projection, we have about 150 more kindergartners than last year,” Riesgraf told school board directors at the meeting. “Most of our kindergarten growth was in the .”

"The kindergarten enrollment is very encouraging, I was very excited to see that,” School Board Director Teresa Lunt said after the presentation, praising School/Community Relations Director Barbara Olson for her marketing efforts.   

Despite the climb in kindergarten students, Riesgraf reported enrollment across the rest of the Osseo School District remained “fairly stable” with projections for the school year. First- through sixth-grade classrooms have slightly less enrollment than the district projected while secondary student enrollment remained “as expected” as of Oct. 1.

“We are very near to what we had projected our enrollment would be this month [Oct. 1] … We are slightly below what we expected by about 90 students,” Riesgraf said.

Enrollment numbers in the district took an unexpected dip before the 2008-09 school year following a round of $16 million in budget cuts.

“Since that time, our enrollment has been declining slightly but has been fairly stable,” Riesgraf told the school board.

A final enrollment report is anticipated to be presented to the Osseo School District School Board in December.