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“There are always families who haven’t registered yet, who have moved to the district or this is their first child that’s going to be starting 4K or kindergarten, and they hadn’t registered them yet. And, there are also typically families that move out of the district during the summer and sometimes they don’t let us know and we don’t know until they register in another district and that district contacts us directly,” Dahman said.

Dahman said the numbers will change again before the end of the summer, and then again between the first day of the school and the third Friday of the school year, which is when districts are required to report student counts to the Wisconsin Department of Instruction.

As of last Thursday, there were 3,463 students registered in the district. There were a total of 3,457 students in Milton’s third Friday count in 2024-25. In 2023-24, it was 3,447.

After the 2024-25 third Friday count, Dahman said, “that’s extremely unusual these days. Most school districts are seeing declining enrollment.”

The district’s 2025-26 preliminary enrollment number includes 1,087 students in kindergarten through third grade, 781 students in grades 4-6, 536 in grades 7-8 and 1,059 in grades 9-12. The largest grade is kindergarten, which preliminarily has 236 students. Of that, 82 would be at Harmony, 22 at Consolidated, 59 at West and 73 at East.

Average class sizes

Board members shared concern over average class sizes at Northside, which has grades 4-6. The average class size for the whole school is projected to be just less than 27 students. At the fourth-grade level, it is anticipated to be almost 26 students. In fifth grade, it is expected to be just under 28 students and in sixth grade it is expected to be just over 27 students.

“At what point do we add a section? Twenty-seven is a lot of kids,” board member Joe Martin said.

“Twenty-seven is big. We are in that range at Northside. We have been for a couple years, in that 25-27 range. We have a lot of students in that class, but our teachers are strong teachers and they can address that. I’m comfortable with that number of sections and that number of students in a class coming there,” Dahman replied. “But it’s something we can take a look at.”

At Northside, there are nine sections of fourth grade. There are 10 each for both fifth and sixth.

The average class size at Harmony is expected to be just under 22 students. The average class size at Consolidated is expected to be 22.5. At West, the expected class size is just over 21 students. At East, the average class size is expected to be just over 22 students. The largest is expected to be Harmony’s second-grade class at just over 25 students.