LINDEN-Marengo County School Superintendent Luke Hallmark said early in the school year the county has been pleased with some of the increasing enrollment numbers they have seen.

“Things are a little different from the until numbers we had,” Hallmark said. “John Essex is up about six students. They were projected to have 215 and they are up to 221.”

Hallmark said their Thomaston school has been the most pleasant surprise of all.

“I think A.L. Johnson has been the biggest surprise,” Hallmark said. “They are up about 16 students from what we had projected and they are up 10 from last years ADM.”

Marengo County High School was down 15 from their projected and 17 from ADM and Sweet Water was down 15 from projected numbers and 23 from ADM. The system as a whole reported 1,570 students for this year.

Hallmark also discussed Alatax numbers with the board as well.

“I wont say it looks good and I wont say it looks bad,” Hallmark said. “It looks steady.”

Hallmark said rising gas prices have put a damper on some of the money given to schools through the countywide tax. However, he said as people continue to travel the numbers should look up.

“There are some concerns with fuel prices the way they are,” Hallmark said. “Of course we rely a lot on our 1 cent sales tax based on people spending here on Marengo County.

Hallmark said they are also working to improve the systems marks in their Adequate Yearly Progress report. He said they met with state officials and discussed some of the plans they would put into place.

“We had a meeting in Montgomery and the one section we talked about had to do with special education and grades four through six,” Hallmark said. “We already have all of our school improvement plans going on in all our schools.”

Hallmark said they would also meet with local teachers to better reach their students.

“We have meetings scheduled with all our teachers for next week,” Hallmark said. “We will talk about monitoring forms, analyzing what a student did last year and bringing it forth to this year.”