Thanks to a large incoming kindergarten class, the Middleburgh Central School enrollment has inched just over 800 for the 2015-16 school year.
Enrollment (which changes frequently with move-ins and move-outs) is currently at 803, up slightly from the 2014-15 total of 798.
Enrollment has been consistently decreasing for the last decade.
Total enrollment stood at 817 for the 2013-14 school year, 869 for 2012-13, and 853 for 2011-12.
Boosting this year's enrollment is an incoming kindergarten class of 63, one of the largest in several years.
Enrollment numbers by grade are:
• Pre-kindergarten: 32, down from 36. The total was 30 the year before.
• Kindergarten: 63, up from 42. The total was 54 the year before.
• First grade: 41, down from 55. It was 57 the year before.
• Second grade: 53, up from 52. The total was 54 the year before.
• Third grade: 56, the same as the year before. The total was 50 for the 2013-14 school year.
• Fourth grade: 57, up from 52. It was 57 the year before.
• Fifth grade: 55, down from 61. The total was 56 the year before.
• Sixth grade: 59, up from 54. The enrollment was 56 the year prior.
• Seventh grade: 59, up from 55. The total was 58 the prior year.
• Eighth grade: 54, down from 60. The number was 85 the year before.
• Ninth grade: 63, down from 88. The enrollment was 70 the prior year.
• 10th grade: 86, up from 69. It was 59 the prior year.
• 11th grade: 69, up from 61. The total was 58 the year before.
• 12th grade: 54, down from 57. The total was 73 the year before.
There is also one student attending a GED program and one high school student that is ungraded.
The issue of declining enrollment is quite opposite of the problem that school officials faced in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
A proposed plan to unite five districts in the county under one district failed. A second proposal to merge MCS and SCS was also defeated in a vote.
Enrollment had climbed to 1,146 in 1970 and 1,214 in 1971, according to the book "1984 School Anniversary, Middleburgh, N.Y."
In 1970, four first grade and two second grade classes were moved to the Friary on Route 145 (currently the brick Russian Orthodox Church). The kindergarten classes were held in four half-day sessions in a mobile classroom on the school property, it stated in the anniversary book. The mobile classrooms were placed on the tennis courts.
The enrollment reached 1,261 in 1972 and eventually a high of 1,262 in the late 1970s.
The enrollment increase led to the building of the elementary school. Voters approved the new school in 1973. Classes moved to the new building on January 29, 1975.