Laconia school enrollment inches upward

LACONIA — The number of students attending Laconia’s public schools is continuing to slowly increase, according to latest enrollment figures shared by Superintendent Steve Tucker at the school board meeting on Tuesday.

All told, there are 1,922 students enrolled in the city’s schools, Tucker said.

Tucker said district enrollment has generally been in the high 1,800 to low 1,900 range. Last year he said there were 1,864 students spread across the five schools in the district. In 2020, the figure was 1,912, he said.

One notable increase is at Laconia High School, which has significant boosts in the number of students in the first- and second-year classes. The current enrollment at Laconia High is 622 students. Typically the school’s student population has been in the mid-500s, he said. Last year, LHS had 583 students, according to New Hampshire Department of Education statistics.

One impact of this increase in high school enrollment has been in the area of interscholastic sports. Some sports teams have moved from Division 3 to Division 2 because of the high enrollment numbers, he said.

The current total enrollment for the district is the highest it has been since the 2015-16 school year when there were 1,939 students in the system, according to NH Department of Education statistics.

Tucker also told the board that the school voucher program — also called Educational Freedom Accounts — has had a negligible impact on the district’s enrollment.

He said that of the 91 students whose families are now receiving funds to use for private school or home schooling expenses, only seven have actually transferred out of the public school system. The rest, he said, are students who were already attending private schools or being home-schooled prior to the passage of the school voucher bill in 2021.

Tucker said the parents of the 91 students are receiving a total of $461,090 through the program.