PEACHAM, Vt. (AP) – A decade after the Peacham Elementary School was enlarged to accommodate 100 students the school has half that number.

“We didn’t anticipate that it would be temporary,” Principal Margaret MacLean said of the growth in numbers that has since disappeared.

The K-6 school has laid off two teachers, combined classrooms, reduced programs and cut the principal’s job in half.

“It’s about as lean and mean as it can get,” MacLean said.

Peacham is not alone in facing the challenge of educating fewer students: Many small rural schools across Vermont and parts of the Northeast are also looking at a declining student population.

“Overall, it’s a relatively stable long-term downward trend. People are having fewer children,” said Patrick Phillips, deputy commissioner of the Maine Department of Education.

Between 2000 and 2003, Vermont had the greatest decline in the number of children from birth to age 14, according to recent figures from the U.S. Census. The number of children under age 5 dropped by 8.7 percent; the decline in children from age 5 to 13 was 9.1 percent. After Vermont, the nine states with the greatest declines in children under age 5 include Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, New York and Rhode Island.

“It’s an issue of how you manage the school in an era of declining revenues associated with declining enrollments and at the same time try to provide high quality education,” said Jeff Francis, executive director of the Vermont Superintendents’ Association.

The decline is more of a regional than a national problem. Between 2001 and 2013 enrollment in the Northeast is projected to fall by 2 percent, with a 3.2 percent drop in Vermont, 2.4 percent in Maine and 0.2 percent in New Hampshire, while nationally enrollment in elementary and secondary schools is expected to increase 5 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Maine Gov. John Baldacci has offered financial incentives to encourage schools to become more efficient, share costs or consolidate, said Deputy Education Commissioner Patrick Phillips.

The impact will be fewer school expansions, more multi-age classrooms, less pressure on high schools and local discussions about whether to keep small schools — often the center of the community — open, said Vermont Education Commissioner Richard Cate.

“It’s a pretty hard social decision for people to make,” he said.

In Greensboro, the Lakeview Union School will lose 21 sixth graders this year and gain only four kindergartners next year.

“It is making people rather nervous,” said principal Linda Aiken. “There have been comments made, ‘Are we going to be looking at closing the school?’ That does not help staff morale.”

Belvidere is negotiating to send its students four miles away to Waterville Elementary School starting this fall in response to an enrollment drop from 40 students in 2000 to just 21 this year.

Tuition at Waterville will be around $8,000 per student, excluding transportation costs, compared to a per pupil cost of $20,000 if the school remains open, said Robert McNamara, superintendent of Lamoille North Supervisory Union.

Changes made last year to Vermont’s education funding law have helped. Under Act 68, property taxes are expected to go down in many towns this year.

That has eased the debate about school spending in Peacham. The school budget that was voted down twice two years ago passed this year.

“The sentiment is that they want to keep the school,” said MacLean.

The larger issue, she said, is rising property values that are changing the town’s demographics.

“Peacham is becoming a very expensive place to live so young families can’t find affordable housing,” she said. “Any families we’ve got in the last few years have been families who have moved from out of state and come from substantial means.”

For now, small schools keep a close eye on who’s moving in, who’s having babies, and who’s moving out.

“We had a family this year from Atlanta, Georgia, and next year, two boys from the Bronx,” said MacLean.

“For the next couple of years the projection is low, but following that it appears that we will have several little people arriving,” said Aiken.

Next week school officials in Morgan, Brighton, Charleston and Holland in the northeast corner of Vermont will meet to brainstorm about how they might share resources and teachers.

“I really don’t want to see the local school close,” said Morgan School Board Chairman Robert Cargill, who sent his two boys there. “And I also live in town and pay taxes.

It’s an emotional thing,” he said. “We have to take time with it. We have to really look at what’s best for the kids and the town.

I know that maybe we have to change our perspective and look at the wider community, but that’s a lot of changing for everybody.”

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On the Net:

The Projections of Education Statistics to 2013: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/projections/

AP-ES-04-03-04 1217EST