Enrollment at local public schools has held nearly steady over the past five years, but fluctuations in class sizes have caused officials to scramble to fill in the gaps.

Four new teaching positions have been approved by the Vicksburg Warren School District Board of Trustees since the first day of classes, Aug. 5.

“For kindergarten and first grade, in particular, those are the hardest two grades to predict enrollments,” said Jerry Boland, the District 1 representative on the Vicksburg Warren School District’s Board of Trustees. “We try to get them as early as possible, so we can get those classrooms set up, but until after Labor Day, it’s hard to know how many kids to prepare for.”

Over the past five years, the district has shown a decrease of 84 students, or .9 percent. This year, the decrease is 37 students, from 8,878 to 8,841, in the district’s pre-kindergarten to 12th grade and GED-assistance programs.

The additional teachers had to be hired because state guidelines limit class sizes to 27 in kindergarten through fourth grades, and 33 in fifth and sixth grades. The hires were approved in school board meetings at the end of August and September.

For Bovina Elementary, the board approved a new first-grade teaching position in August and one for kindergarten in September, bringing the total to three classrooms each. At the upper end of its student body, Bovina has just one sixth-grade classroom, with 30 students.

In the middle, with 37 students in each third and fourth grades, the school has created a third- and fourth-grade combination class in addition to one third- and one fourth-grade classroom.

The board also added a second-grade teacher at Dana Road Elementary and a third-grade instructor at Beechwood.

In addition, six teacher assistant positions have been created — two at Bovina, one at Dana Road, one at Warrenton and two at Warren Junior.

Local private schools, which charge tuition, also have seen relative stability in enrollments over the last five years.

Vicksburg Catholic School dean of students Mike Jones said St. Francis Elementary and St. Aloysius High School have a combined 579 students, up from 555 last year but down slightly from 590 in 2006.

At Porters Chapel Academy, headmaster Doug Branning said the enrollment is at 207 students, down from 280 five years ago but up from 198 last year.

“We are on the upswing, and we expect it to get better,” he said. “The issue is the economy, there’s no doubt about that.”

Elementary-level class sizes are limited to 20 at PCA, he said.

The public school district’s newest elementary — Bovina, which reopened in 2008 after being closed for nine years — has 327 students.

Students were transferred out of Sherman Avenue, Warren Central Intermediate and Beechwood schools to the school off Tiffentown Road, right off Interstate 20.