Enrollment surge surprises schools

Spend time in both Cambridge and Brookline, and you'll find the two communities have a lot in common. They share reputations for having electorates somewhat left-of-center, have many luminaries among their residents, and are proud of being bastions of intellectual curiosity. They also harbor a friendly sense of competition.

In the arena of education, Brookline and Cambridge are often mentioned in the same breath as examples of maintaining high-quality public schools. Both communities pride themselves on having the kind of schools that keep residents from turning to private institutions or rushing to the suburbs as soon as their children reach kindergarten age.

But as Brookline school officials puzzle over what prompted a 25 percent increase in the number of kindergartners this year over the 2005-2006 school year, survey results released this fall have surprised officials on both sides of the line.

Of the 72 percent of kindergarten parents in Brookline who responded to the survey, conducted by the town's school department, 19 percent said they have lived in town for one year or less. Less than half, or 43 percent, said they had lived in town for more than five years. The newcomers primarily had moved from Boston, but officials said they were surprised to find that Cambridge was the second-most popular answer to the question of where families had moved from.

" The exodus from Cambridge, to us, is not necessarily something you'd expect," said Judy Meyers , who chairs the Brookline School Committee.

Cambridge Mayor Kenneth E. Reeves, who chairs the School Committee, said Cambridge schools are in fine shape and he is not worried that there could be an exodus to Brookline. Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, the public high school, "has not been better than in the last two decades," he said. "The high school is cooking. We have a new principal, and all test scores are up.

" There is no place like Cambridge and the notion of an exodus to Brookline has never really been something that's come up."

What distinguishes Cambridge from Brookline? "We are probably far more diverse in every way," Reeves said.

As Brookline school officials prepare to add about eight modular classrooms to their stock of available space, there's a sense of pride in their ability to attract families from all over, including from the Cambridge schools. But there's also a sense of caution.

"It's exciting to us -- it's an opportunity," Meyers said. "At the same time, we aren't really prepared for it. We're going to be squeezed."

The large increase has prompted the reemergence of the "dreaded ninth elementary school that people talk to me about," said Brookline Superintendent of Schools William Lupini .

But building a ninth elementary, Meyers says, is risky business.

"It you build it, they will come," she said, predicting that a new school building would soon be ready to burst at the seams as with the current schools.

Also, Lupini says, so much is uncertain about state school building assistance funds that it's hard to start talking about it now without knowing how that will turn out.

Earlier this month, Lupini went to selectmen and asked for money from the town's capital improvement plan to pay for the eight modular classrooms. They probably wouldn't be needed until the fall of 2008, and school officials wonder whether the upsurge is an anomaly. Based on projections, though, Lupini said he expects it to be an issue for at least three years.

School officials rely on information from the town clerk's office on how many babies are born in a given time frame to predict how many will wind up in kindergarten. In years past, about 60 percent to 70 percent of babies born five years earlier enrolled in kindergarten. This fall, when the number of kindergartners jumped from 465 the previous year to 550, the figure climbed to 91 percent.

Lupini said that although schools may be a little crowded, high demand is not such a bad thing.

"I really like that problem, as opposed to the alternative," he said. "Some districts, no matter what they're doing, no matter what strategy they're employing, are having trouble retaining students," he said.

Lupini said he plans to talk with Newton school officials about trends and demographic patterns to figure out how better to plan for skyrocketing kindergarten figures. Since he arrived in Brookline in July 2004, the number of kindergarten classrooms has gone from 21 to 24 to 28.

"We were hiring kindergarten teachers in late August because the numbers kept coming in higher," Lupini said.

Town officials hope the modular classrooms will only have to be rented for a short time.

"I'm not sure where we're going to put everybody," Meyers said.

"The good news is, we're popular and people are excited about coming to Brookline, and we're excited about having more people come."

Emma Stickgold can be reached at estickgold@globe.com.