The population of Fairfax County’s school system will balloon next year by more than 2,000 students, recent projections show, causing a new financial shortfall and countering notions that growth in student enrollment had begun to flatten.
The projected 168,384 students in 2009 will be 3,541 more than what school budget makers forecast a year ago for 2008 and 2,118 more than the 166,266 now enrolled, requiring an additional $22 million in spending and 358 new positions to accommodate the growth and staffing at two new elementary schools, according to budget documents.
While school officials have not, at least publicly, laid out where they think each of the new students will come from, two factors could be fueling the influx: The exodus of immigrant families from Prince William County, which has undertaken a broad crackdown on illegal immigrants, and new families coming to the county due to Base Realignment and Closure at Fort Belvoir.
Fairfax has taken the brunt of the Prince William migration, bringing on 623 limited-English-speaking students of the 760 who left the neighboring county this year.
The Fairfax County School Board was set to discuss the expected population growth at a meeting Thursday night, as well as several other budget measures made possible by a $40 million infusion of new cash from the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. Included in that package is a 2 percent salary increase for school employees, which has disappointed teacher’s groups.
“Teachers are just having a really tough time making it,” said Mark Glaser, president of the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers. “What the School Board should be chided for is the $110 million in bloated bureaucracy that hasn’t been cut.”
Neither School Board Chairman Dan Storck nor Providence District member Phillip Niedzielski-Eichner could be reached for comment on Thursday.
