Lake Washington School District’s (LWSD) enrollment grew by 1,114 students last year, from 26,716 students in 2014 to 27,830 on Oct. 1.

The enrollment increase this year moved the district from sixth largest district in the state to fourth largest. LWSD passed both Evergreen School District and Kent School District. It trails only Seattle, Spokane and Tacoma School districts in size.

This year’s increase follows five straight years of enrollment increases. The increases averaged about 625 students per year, or the size of a large elementary school. This upward trend began in the 2009-10 school year after a decade of little change in enrollment.

“Redmond is growing quickly, but we are seeing growth elsewhere as well,” said LWSD communications director Kathryn Reith about where they are seeing increased enrollment.

She said while Redmond is showing the most growth, they are seeing higher numbers in parts of Kirkland. Sammamish has been mostly steady, with some small growth, Reith said.

She added that the growth is at all grade levels.

The district began seeing significant growth beginning in 2009, though Reith said they had been seeing larger classroom sizes in the kindergarten and first-grade levels a few years before then. Because of that growth at the lower-grade levels, she said they are now seeing more growth at the middle-school and high-school levels as those students have grown older and moved up through the district.

According to an LWSD press release, part of the increase from 2014, about 339 students, is due to a change in the accounting process for students who are enrolled in the Washington Network for Innovative Careers (WANIC). WANIC is a skills center serving seven districts. It offers advanced-level career and technical education programs such as fire and medical and health. Bellevue, Issaquah and Northshore school districts — in addition to LWSD — offer WANIC classes, which are open to all students in the Lake Washington, Bellevue, Issaquah, Mercer Island, Northshore, Riverview and Snoqualmie Valley school districts.

Reith said as the host district for WANIC,  LWSD handles the accounting and other administrative duties for the program. She said while this may be the case, it doesn’t mean all of the funds come from the district.

Also, as the host district, LWSD is now required to count these students in its enrollment.

“In the past, the state allowed the district offering the WANIC classes to include the WANIC students in their counts,” Reith said. “Now, the host district (LWSD) counts all WANIC students. So a student may be from Riverview and go to classes in Bellevue and still show up in the LWSD count.”

She added that there is very little impact to LWSD classrooms: there is a WANIC building on the Lake Washington Institute of Technology Kirkland campus where many classes are held and some are held at DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond. Lake Washington High School offers culinary arts and American Sign Language as part of WANIC.

Excluding WANIC and LWSD’s Parent Partnership Program, the district’s actual enrollment was seven students less than the projection used for budgeting purposes.

Enrollment growth is forecasted to continue. The district is projected to grow to more than 30,000 students by 2020-21.

“As our cities grow, so does our enrollment,” said Superintendent Dr. Traci Pierce. “We are fortunate to serve vibrant, attractive communities where people want to live and work. With this growth comes the challenge to provide classroom space to so many additional students.”

A community task force has worked since December 2014 to develop recommendations for long-term strategies the district can use to address the challenges of additional classroom capacity as well as aging schools.