Thread: Huge Enrollment Numbers For Visalia Unified This Year

08/15/2007 - Students in Visalia will have their first day of school Thursday. This year enrollment at Visalia Unified is at its highest ever.
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Thursday Visalia Unified will open its doors with 1000 more students than they had last year. Student enrollment has been on the rise, especially in Northwest Visalia where Oak Grove Elementary School has nearly doubled their student population since they opened 3 years ago.

This class is empty but crayons and notebooks are all ready for students to use when school starts. Yesenia Alvarez, Parent, says "I am really excited to start my kids they need to get back on a routine, back on schedule and they're really excited to start school."

Visalia Unified School District says the number of students enrolling in schools is growing. Oak Grove elementary school principal Scott Wahab says most are coming from outside of Visalia. "A lot of the kids were in the Bay area L.A. and that kind of thing really coming in to take advantage of some inexpensive homes," says Wahab.

Newly built homes surround Oak Grove Elementary school's campus. When the school opened in 2004 it had 579 students. This year more than 1000 are enrolled. To help accommodate the new students the school has added two more portable classrooms and hired 4 more teachers.

Next year some Oak Grove students will be moved to Manuel Hernandez elementary school which is still under construction. Workers are also building an additional elementary school in Southeast Visalia.

Doug Bartsch, VUSD Administrator, says "The two schools are being built for up to 750 students each we anticipate that the Manuel Hernandez school will open at or near capacity."

Bartsch says Visalia's growth has come as no surprise. He just hopes the district will continue to receive funding for new schools as Visalia's population expands.

"It's not affecting us as far as grade-wise or anything like that it does affect the teachers it is a larger impact for the teachers I can sympathize for them," says Alvarez.

Visalia Unified has also hired 100 new employees, most of them are teachers.

http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?secti ... id=5571558

And they like to give all the incorrect excuses. The housing market is collapsing, and they are blaming the increase on out of area people. They failed to mention the illegal aliens and their anchor babies who continue the (MOD EDIT) population by getting pregnant and having at least 5 kids by the age of 20.

Okay, so are these teachers teaching in English, or Spanish?

It would be in English, but the kids can't understand it anyway. It's no wonder a certain group leads in the dropout category. Same one that leads in the teen pregnancy one, and the same as illegal aliens.