Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS : EDUCATION : Kindergartens Enjoying Increased Enrollments

A nationwide “mini-baby boom”--created by more young adults reaching child-bearing age, coupled with members of the original Baby Boom generation who postponed child-bearing until recently--is being reflected by increased enrollments in Orange County kindergartens.

“It’s great!” said Cheryl Norton, director of communications for the Fountain Valley School District. She said this year, for the first time in a dozen years, Fountain Valley’s kindergartens show growth rather than a loss in enrollment from the previous year.

“This means that in years ahead we won’t be having half-empty classrooms or selling our schools,” said A. Stanley Corey, superintendent of Irvine Unified School District.

The trend in Orange County is apparent in most of the unified and elementary school districts, according to Audrey Capasso, a statistician with the county’s Department of Education. First-day enrollment this year in all kindergartens in the county was 24,945, compared to 24,243 last year, she said.

A special report released by the U.S. Census Department in Washington indicates that the number of kindergarten pupils nationally rose from 3.5 million in 1984 to 3.8 million in 1985. In the same period, nursery-school enrollment rose from 2.4 million to 2.5 million.