Since the first day of school in September, the city’s school system has been groaning under the weight of an unexpected spike in enrollment. Total membership is up 703 students since last October, which represents an increase of 7 percent increase over last year’s enrollment. School officials say that’s an increase higher than any other division in Virginia, a trend that’s expected to add 12 percent to the total student population over the next five years.

"The high enrollment numbers affect more than just classroom teachers, they affect the whole system" said Melynda Wilcox, president of the Alexandria PTA Council. "It means that the school psychologists have a higher caseload and the music teachers will have to teach additional classes."

Central administration officials say they are worried about what they call a "perfect storm" of factors that could be working behind the trends. The troubled economy could be encouraging parents who would otherwise opt for private schools to enroll their children in public schools, and a rising number of foreclosures could be encouraging parents to move into Alexandria’s rental properties. In addition to all of these factors, the Alexandria City Council passed a resolution last year announcing that the city government "will neither make inquiries about nor report on the citizenship of those who seek the protection of its laws or the use of its services except as required by law."

"People who don’t read Spanish-language newspapers might not have a full appreciation for how closely this community follows immigration policy," said Jim Boulet Jr., executive director of a Springfield-based lobbying group English First. "Alexandria put out the welcome mat to illegal immigrants, so it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that this is happening."

DEMOGRAPHIC STATISTICS show that 56 percent of the new students are Hispanic, a phenomenon that Boulet said was a direct result of the resolution City Council adopted last year. After the council unanimously adopted the resolution in October 2007, Boulet said that Alexandria had become what he called a "sanctuary city," and he predicted a spike in school enrollment as a result of the council’s action. Yet others challenged the idea that a symbolic resolution would have had much impact on enrollment trends in a city that already has a reputation of being a welcoming community for immigrants.

"I bet you polled the parents of these new students you would learn that none of them have even heard of this resolution," said John Liss, executive director of Tenets and Workers United. "But to the extent that Alexandria rejects racist and xenophobic policy of Prince William County, I think it’s true that more people are moving here."

School officials are responding to the increase by hiring more teachers, especially at the Kindergarten level. Superintendent Morton Sherman said that the division has added 97 Kindergarten students since the first day of school in September, with most of the increase taking place at West End schools such as Tucker Elementary School, Ramsay Elementary School, Adams Elementary School and Polk Elementary School. Some students at Tucker have already been moved to other schools to account for the overcrowding there.

"We had a trough in enrollment over the past couple of years, and there’s all kinds of theories about why that occurred," Sherman said during a recent School Board meeting. "So when the enrollments when down a couple of years, it changed the projections for the future, and we might have underprojected because of that. But we are very similar to other school divisions in the area."