Enrollment in the Austin Public School District has decreased slightly since last year, but that's not surprising.

According to Educational Services Director Sheila Berger, the total number of students in the district is down 13, compared to last year's Oct. 1 totals.

The biggest drop was in the elementary schools which currently have a total of 1,805 students, down 34 students from last year's Oct. 1 figures.

Of course, last year, the enrollment was down 100 students, "so we're far better than where we were sitting a year ago," says Berger.

The enrollment decline is far from unusual, though. "Across the state, we have been seeing a slow enrollment decline," because, during the past 20 years, people have had fewer and fewer children, Berger says. "Austin is actually somewhat late. Other districts saw this happen in the '90s and we're just starting to feel it now."

The enrollment drop hasn't been at all noticeable at Ellis Middle School or Austin High School, though.

Candace Raskin, principal of Ellis, says the middle school's enrollment "is slightly higher than expected. We're sitting at just under 1,000 with 998 students. We picked up a few more sixth graders than we thought." She says that because sixth grade is a transition year, the number of students tends to fluctuate a little more than in seventh and eighth grade.

Overall, though, "we have a really healthy enrollment," she says.

Joe Brown, principal of Austin High School also has seen a rise in the number of students there. As of Thursday, the high school had 1,166 full-time students, which is an increase of 60 from the end of the 2001-02 school year.

Of this year's current total, 38 students live outside the district and took advantage of the school's open-enrollment.

Additionally, eight Pacelli students and nine home-schooled students are taking classes part-time at AHS.

Those trends, Brown says, are "positive things."

He says those increases can be traced, in part, to the fact "we have things at Austin High that others do not." Those things include advanced placement classes, computer science classes and thriving industrial technology, agricultural and fine arts programs.

Despite enrollment being up from last year, Brown says, "we're right on average, we're right where we need to be. We're running very efficiently. The number of students and the number of faculty are a very good match."

Though some classes are above the school's target size of 28 students, almost all of the classes are at or below that figure, putting AHS in a much better position than districts like Mankato, Winona and Rochester, which all have many classes with more than 30 students.

However, the district's overall decline is bad news for funding. State funding is based on the number of students in a district, so the more students a district has, the more money it gets. However, with a decline in funding and an increase in poverty levels, the district will have to make some tough decisions in the near future.

That includes examining class sizes and deciding if the target class sizes are financially feasible. Right now, 28 students in the fourth and fifth grades is what the district can afford. "We can't afford to have just 20 students in a class in the fourth and fifth grade," Berger says. "Is it an ideal situation? Probably not."

Amanda L. Rohde can be reached at 434-2214 or by e-mail at amanda.rohde@austindailyherald.com