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    The slow but steady decline in students in Wendover school’s may have ended according to kindergarten preregistration numbers at the West Wendover Elementary school.
    According to the WWES admittance office some 50 future kindergartners registered for the 2008-2009 school year up from 39 pre-registered a year ago. While the increase in 11 students may not seem like much it was the first time in five years that there was an increase at all.
    Two years ago the preregistration numbers were at 71 and the year before that there were 101.
    In the past preregistration numbers were indicative of the actual number of new kindergartners and by extrapolation the number total students not only at the West Wendover Elementary School but also at the High School.
    For the first time since 1999 total number of students reporting for the first day of school also dropped below 600 to 591 in 2007.
    By May of 2008 the total number of students inched its way up above the 600 mark.
    Since its peak enrollment in 2003 the total number of students has fallen the equivalent of almost four classes. Most of the losses in total school population has come from the lower grades especially kindergarten.
    At the beginning of this school year year only 67 kindergartners showed up for the first day of school the smallest class since even before the school split in 1996 when the joint school system with Wendover, Utah was dissolved. With Wendover, Utah students attending the then newly built Anna Smith School WWES student population fell from 718 to 523 from 1995 to 1996. But the 1996 kindergarten class at 77 students number ten more than this year’s class.
    More than any other class kindergarten enrollment is also indicative of demographic trends in the city as a whole since it is the first time “new” residents must literally stand up and be counted. And it is not only new five year old being counted, with a large percentage of illegal aliens it is often the first time whole families come under official notice.
    WWES population decline roughly coincides with the advent of guest workers arriving into West Wendover’s work force and the State Line Bankruptcy.
    Once Wendover’s largest employer, StateLine Casino properties cut back its workforce by as much as 25 percent in the year leading up to its filing of chapter 13 and was the first casino in town  to utilize guest workers to further reduce labor costs.
    Hailing mostly from eastern Europe and later the far east guest workers on 3 month to one year visas work for considerably less than locals and live in employee housing.
    Although the influx of guest workers was too little too late to save the StateLine, the program expanded after the casino’s demise and take over by new owners.
    By the very definition of the name guest workers do not come to a community to settled down make babies and five years later send them to school.
    Across the parking lot West Wendover High School showed a modest increase of seven new students.
    Particularly for West Wendover, school population is a very good indicator of population numbers and while the 2010 census is still three years off there is every indication that if the local economy does not turn around and soon, West Wendover will have the distinction of being the only or one of the very few shrinking communities in the fastest growing state in America.
    But while school population is a good number to gauge total population, it is not a major factor in the state demographer’s annual population estimates which determine the amount of state tax money distributed to local governments in the state.
    Instead the state office primarily relies upon the number of housing units in every given community and if there is divergence the results can be devastating when the estimate is reconciled with the actual census.
    Seven years ago Elko City suffered a severe budget crunch when the 2000 census reported counted over 6,000 fewer residents than the most recent estimates from the state office. The impact of the sudden shrinkage ws also felt in the Elko County School District causing a crisis almost as great as when the mining boom went bust in the late 1990’s.
    The reason for the discrepancy was that when mining went bust many families left Elko when the mines closed. Their houses of course did not leave and still figured in the state’s estimates even though they were empty.
    While the number of pre registered students is only higher than the previous year’s and still considerably below even that of two years ago the albeit small upswing could indicate that the five year long erosion of population may be over.