Lake Placid Elementary School students get off the bus on the first day of school on Sept. 7. (Enterprise photo — Sydney Emerson)

LAKE PLACID — Lake Placid Central School District’s enrollment numbers have increased for the first time in seven years, bucking a nearly decade-long trend of declining enrollment at districts around the region.

For the 2023-24 school year, 550 K-12 students are enrolled at LPCSD. That’s still down from enrollment numbers five years ago, when enrollment was around 625. But it’s up from 537 students last year.

This means that LPCSD has seen an almost 2.5% increase in its student body — which, though a small percentage, is still markedly higher than the other districts in the area. The neighboring Saranac Lake Central School District’s enrollment increased from 1,067 to 1,070 students — a 0.28% increase — while Tupper Lake Central School District went from 736 students in the fall of 2021 to a current 722 students — a 1.9% decrease.

Lake Placid’s latest enrollment numbers are not yet finalized. The school will release official enrollment numbers in October.

In the past, superintendents have pointed to the lack of affordable housing as a major factor impacting enrollment at LPCSD.

“It’s probably too early to attribute (the increased enrollment) to any single cause,” LPCSD Superintendent Timothy Seymour said. “Obviously, we’re pleased to see more students enrolling in the district. It’s a good sign. I think that, as a community, we’ve been working hard to address the housing insecurity issue and some different housing arrangements have come online from last year to this year, so I think perhaps some of those may be having an impact.”

Seymour cited the McKenzie Overlook apartment complex in Lake Placid — which opened to long-term residents earlier this year after it was used as housing for the 2023 Winter World University Games — as a potential factor in the district’s increased enrollment. Every residents who lives in the complex must earn between 40% to 80% of the Area Median Income at the time of their application, and the cost of rent varies based on how many people live in a unit and how much they collectively earn each year.

Homeowners also began to move into another new Lake Placid housing complex on Wesvalley Road, Fawn Valley, earlier this year. The single-family homes are estimated to cost around $220,000 and the townhomes are estimated to cost around $180,000 per unit.

With more affordable housing comes more students in public schools, Seymour theorized, though said it was likely too early to “speculate too much.”

Homeschooled students are not included in the enrollment count, though LPCSD does keep track of homeschool numbers within the district. Currently, there are about 28 students being homeschooled. Seymour said that the homeschool number tends to fluctuate throughout the school year due to the amount of LPCSD students who travel frequently for athletic competitions.

The district is also fully staffed, while other districts have had mixed results with staffing. Saranac Lake Superintendent Diane Fox told the Enterprise last week that SLCSD is fully staffed, while Tupper Lake Superintendent Russ Bartlett highlighted staff and long-term substitute shortages. Seymour attributes to faculty positions consolidated through attrition — a process spurred by a downward trend in enrollment over the past decade.

“I wouldn’t say (attrition) is solely (the cause), I know that we work very hard to negotiate favorable conditions for our staff and we try our best to leverage the things that make our school and community special,” Seymour said. “As of now, I think … we’re just happy that we’re in this situation.”

LPCSD partnered with St. Agnes School, a private Catholic school, in 2014 to offer full-day universal pre-K to all four-year-olds in Lake Placid. St. Agnes School has 52 pre-K students total, 27 of which are enrolled through LPCSD’s universal pre-K program. St. Agnes’ enrollment for Kindergarten through third grade is 43.

St. Agnes Principal Katie Turner told the Enterprise last week that the school is seeing enrollment stability, and that a large preschool population is a good sign for the future.

“There are finally more children in Lake Placid,” Turner said.