MYRA VAUGHN COURTESY PHOTO | Longwood teacher Dian Lindsey and her new kindergarten students at Coram Elementary School.

An unexpected increase in Longwood’s student population have led to larger than expected class sizes in several elementary grades this school year, school officials said at Thursday’s Board of Education meeting.

Superintendent Allan Gerstenlauer said the district had already been planning for slightly larger class sizes this year due to budget cuts, but increased enrollment in kindergarten, third and fourth grades has made things even more challenging.

“Because our budget was to tight, we’re having a lot of difficulty responding to that,” he said.

The district also faced a particularly tough struggle in reigning in class sizes since the spike in enrollment came at the last minute.

The district had planned for 640 kindergarten students but by August 24 enrollment had spiked to 670. Come the first day of school that number had grown to 733.

So while Longwood administrators had planned for class sizes of just under 24 students, the average class size is now over 26 students.

Third grade classes are now up to 29 students per class and fourth grade features about 28 students in the average class.

“The population in the last three to four weeks truly exploded,” Dr. Gerstenlauer said.

Had students been enrolled earlier, school officials would have had an opportunity to move resources around and better control class sizes, he said.

New board member Frank Muraca asked Dr. Gerstenlauer if the board could reexamine discretionary spending in this school year’s budget. He suggested looking to save dollars on library books and technology spending, and put that money into hiring teachers and reducing class sizes.

Dr. Gerstenlauer said he and the board could do that, but added that they examined the budget for about nine months last school year.

“There’s not a lot left in our general budget,” he warned.

He added about nine teachers would have to be brought back to successfully reduce class sizes.

“We just don’t have that kind of money,” he said.

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