Over the past five years, the public school fall enrollment count has increased over 4.3% with the majority of this growth in the last two years. In the prior five years, fall enrollment growth has been less than 1% for the entire period. From the fall of 1995 to 1999 public school enrollment increased from 243,097 students to 245,031. Public school enrollment in the fall of 2000 was 245,377 and the latest count in the fall of 2004 was 256,004. The growth from 2003 to 2004 alone was nearly 1.6% or 3,967 new public school students.