UPDATE: High Enrollment Numbers "False Alarm"

Update (11:00 a.m.): The Cobb County School District has declared Monday’s higher than anticipated registered enrollment numbers a “false alarm” after Tuesday’s student head count fell to the predicted level.

CCSD Director of Communications Jay Dillon told Patch that the actual head count on Tuesday was 107,452, which was below the district’s projection of 108,716. Dillon added that the district could add as many as 3,000 additional students during the first few weeks of the school year.

School District officials were surprised on Monday when the registered enrollment number for the county was reported as 113,000, which Dillon said is always higher than the actual head count because of students who never show up for school for various reasons, such as a family move.

“We knew actual enrollment would be lower, but still, 113,000 was a big number and more than we were expecting,” Dillon said.

Original Story (7:00 a.m.): The Cobb County School District was caught off guard by a higher than anticipated attendance during the first day of school on Monday, The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.

Jay Dillon, the school district’s communications director, told the AJC that planners had expected 111000 students on Aug. 4, but anecdotal evidence that the initial estimates were to low had filtered up the chain.

An official head count will provided a clearer picture of the district’s enrollment, but no such head count had been released as of Tuesday evening. Patch will publish the count when it is made available.

Although the estimates may have been off, Dillon said the first two to three weeks of school usually see higher than normal attendance rates, and added that the school district will be able to find room for the extra students and hire additional teachers to compensate.