Portable Classrooms Moved in for at Least 220 New Students

Six-year-old Hannah Franklin fidgeted and played with a hand-held computer game Monday while she waited outside the Minot Public School District office with her mother, Katie Franklin, to register for the start of school next week. Katie Franklin said the family moved to Minot from Colorado so her husband could take a new job. Hannah will be a first-grader at Bel Air Elementary.

All new families to the Minot Public Schools are being asked to register at the district office this year instead of at individual schools and there was a long line of parents on Monday morning waiting to fill out the paperwork. Some 79 students were registered at the school district office on Tuesday alone.

At last count there were some 220 more new children enrolling in the school district since school started last fall and a total of 7,105 students registered in K-12, said elementary assistant superintendent Jeff Holm. But the number of new students fluctuates daily.