As Lafayette County schools started classes again a few weeks ago, teachers and administration welcomed 58 new students to the district.

Lafayette County School District Superintendent Adam Pugh reported total enrollment numbers as 2,740 at the district’s board meeting last week.

With enrollment rising, the district has space issues, and the necessity of building a new school is becoming more evident.

“We’re growing, which presents a problem in itself in space,” Pugh said. “We know that we’re going to have to build soon and that soon does not mean in a year or two. The plan is to build an elementary school soon and it will have to be off campus because we don’t have room to build on campus.”

Enrollment at each individual school is as follows: 662 students at Lafayette Elementary School, 664 students at Lafayette Upper Elementary, 645 at Lafayette Middle School and 769 students at Lafayette High School. The district also has 232 students enrolled at the Oxford-Lafayette School of Applied Technology.

Pugh said the construction of a new road for elementary and upper elementary parents has helped with space issues this year. The new road runs in between the elementary school playgrounds, and allows upper and lower elementary parents to loop around the campus to exit rather than coming back out the way they came in.

“The new road is helping, but if we were able to get a building built and get about 700 students off of this campus (it would help more),” Pugh said. “There’s not room on this campus to build anywhere so to put an elementary somewhere else, that’s going to help with traffic problems also.”