---

Crowded classrooms are always contentious among the school crowd.

Less so, this fall.

After years of spike after spike, enrollment reported this month in some area schools are up just a dozen or two since October 2007.

And - incredible as it may sound - some schools have lost students since last year.

Some school officials say the struggling housing market and the economy have been factors. Plainville Superintendent David Raiche said he met this summer with about a half-dozen parents who were relocating to Plainville, "but actually were moving in with either their parents or in-laws."

"Although I didn't pry, I suspect that was because of a financial situation," said Raiche, whose district is serving four fewer students than at this time last year.

"When I think back to a summer ago, I wasn't meeting with any parents who said, 'I'm living with so-and-so, but that's not actually the house I'll be living in,'" he said.

Area school officials provided the Sun Chronicle with preliminary enrollment data as of Oct. 1.

School departments must submit enrollment figures to the Massachusetts Department of Education this month.

Local enrollment increases ranged from 10 students in Wrentham to 24 in Mansfield.

"We're not seeing the growth that we had," Mansfield Superintendent Brenda Hodges said. "For us, we're pretty close to capacity. Our classrooms are really pretty filled."

Hodges said she has observed "a bit of a population move in and move out" among lower-income students in her town.

She said the slower growth "means we don't have to think about how do we accommodate that growth that was hitting us for a few years."

Wrentham Superintendent Jeffrey Marsden said enrollment in his town has been steady the past three years. "I was told that in years past, we'd have 60 to 70 new students every summer," he said.

Marsden said the tough housing market probably has been one factor.

Enrollment losses, meanwhile, range from one student in the King Philip regional school district to 126 in Norton.

In Norfolk, which lost 15 students, Superintendent Don LeClerc said he sees a broader, unrelated economic trend.

"I think people are realizing it's more difficult to raise a family of three, four or five kids," said LeClerc, in his first year in Norfolk. "When you buy baby formula and diapers, it's as expensive as a college tuition."

On the other side of the King Philip district, Plainville's enrollment is down four students.

Losses of 23 students in kindergarten and 19 students in grade four were offset by increases of 12 students in grade one and 20 students in grade five.

However, school officials expected the fifth-grade spike, and promoted one teacher along with the students, Raiche said.

That teaching position should follow the students to sixth grade next year, he said.

Three-quarters of Plainville's new students came from Massachusetts, and primarily within Norfolk County, Raiche said.

"Is there an exodus from the Northeast? I'm not seeing it here," he said.

MICHAEL GELBWASSER can be reached at 508-236-0439 or at mgelbwasser@thesunchronicle.com.