Student Population Growing Faster than Space Available

More than a dozen Washington school districts have added at least a school worth of students over the past two years.

Finding enough classrooms for those children is becoming a challenge.

The districts growing the fastest worry the problem will deepen as the Legislature makes good on its promise to require schools to shrink class sizes in kindergarten through third grade and to give every child access to free, all-day kindergarten.

An Associated Press analysis of Washington school enrollment data shows 136 school districts, out of 295, added students between the 2011-12 school year and the current academic year. Of those, 17 needed to add 400 or more desks during that two-year span. The average elementary school in Washington state has 430 students.