After more than five years of rising class sizes, state demographer Hazel Reinhardt’s updated study shows Austin Public School’s population will continue to grow, although the kindergarten class sizes will start to see decreasing numbers after the 2014-2015 school year.

“We’re still going to see pretty high growth this year, but then the following three years will be [increasing] around 30 to 50 students each year,” Finance Director Mark Stotts said about overall enrollment.

He noted that the last five years have seen an overall increase of about 85 to 88 students per year, and this year will continue that trend with about 4,622 total enrollment, up from last year’s 4,492 — the numbers exclude the Alternative Learning Center and Early Childhood Development. The next three years will continue to increase in overall enrollment, just at a slower pace. Next year’s enrollment is projected at 4,699. The district has projected to increase about 150 to 200 students in overall enrollment over the next five years.

After the 2014-2015 school year, incoming kindergarten class sizes will decrease. Five years down the road, overall kindergarten class sizes are expected to level out at about 350 to 360 students. Class sizes have been around the 400-student mark for a few years, and last year’s kindergarten classes peaked at about 419 students. Because it will take about 10 years for these students to make their way through the school system, Austin High School’s student population will increase for about 10 years, even as the district as a whole levels out.

The high school’s class sizes will grow beginning this year. As larger classes start to move out of the elementary schools, those schools will have fewer students than what they had over the past five years. Ellis Middle School and I.J. Intermediate School will also have larger class sizes for the next few years.

According to Stotts, the school district has seen an increase in special education students, free and reduced lunches and English Language Learning, but there isn’t a good way to determine what areas like those will do in the future.

“That one’s kind of hard to predict,” Stotts said.

The district received the study results last Friday, which Reinhardt worked on over the past few months. The study makes several population projections based on Mower County birth records.

Stotts said school officials now have a better idea of what to plan for, such as how much staff will be needed in the future.

“It helps us to plan our budgets going forward if we kind of know what the trend is going to be,” Stotts said. “We aren’t going to make any drastic changes, we don’t need to at this point.”

He also said the study confirmed the district will have adequate space for incoming students.

District officials began to examine student population after a 2009 report by Reinhardt showed about 400 more students were expected to come to Austin by 2015.