EAST LONGMEADOW – The East Longmeadow School Committee met on Sept. 5 and discussed the start to the new year as well as the superintendent’s report, which included a breakdown of the schools enrollment including the incoming kindergarten class being the largest class in Meadowbrook. Additionally, the school system has recieved nearly $1.5 million in grant money.

Superintendent Gordon Smith noted the kindergarten class is up to 186 students, with the potential of being 187 due to a late-enrollment.

“We’re obviously looking at that very closely and we will hopefully be able to start to see that this is just a bubble that we’re going through or is this the start of what the facility study predicted to be somewhat of a slow growth for about two to three years as the economy recovers,” Smith said. “As we start to get to budget time we’ll look at not only birthrate but what home sales will be and that type of thing, so hopefully we’ll have some solid predictions.”

Mountain View Elementary School and Mapleshade Elementary School have around the same enrollment size as they were last year, however at both schools there is a smaller third grade, but it is still considered average.  The largest grade in the East Longmeadow school district is in the town’s eighth grade, at 230 students.

“The middle school did pick up a number of new enrollments, as a district pre-k to [grade] 12, we’re about 12 students higher than we were last year,” Smith said.

Last year East Longmeadow High School’s enrollment was at 860, though it has dropped to 853 students, Smith indicated this was standard.

At Aug. 1, the deadline for parents to sign their child up with the transportation department to ride the school busses, there were only 1,350 riders.  At the time of the School Committee meeting, there were 1,612 riders.  Smith offered his praise to members of the transportation department and administration for being accommodating with townspeople who may have registered at the last minute.

“It’s a large compliment to Mrs. Soletti, Mrs. White, Mrs. Becker in the work that they did in the constant revolving door of people coming in to register,” Smith noted.

The East Longmeadow School district has also earned several grants this year, including special education allocations, a Title 2A grant and a Title One grant, among others.  The school received an amount of $1,486,689 in grants which is up $71,000 from last year.