BUTLER TWP — The Butler School District's enrollment continues to decrease, though officials see some reasons to be optimistic.

The district had an enrollment of 6,426 students on Monday, Superintendent Brian White reported to the school board, slightly down from its enrollment of 6,578 on Oct. 1 of last year.

The district has 421 kindergarten pupils as of this week, a slight increase from last year. The district graduated 521 seniors last spring.

While it is still losing students on an annual basis, the drop this year of 152 was smaller than the steep decrease the district saw between the 2014-15 and 2015-16 school years, according to data presented to the board Monday.

The October enrollment in 2015 dropped by 377, a 5 percent decrease, while the district saw a drop of 222 last year.

“It does look like we had a spike (of students leaving the district) the year of consolidation, but in the past couple years it has leveled off,” school board President Nina Teff said.

White shared projections done by the state Department of Education, which are based on birth rates and demographic data, that predict the Butler district will lose another 8 percent of its enrollment by 2022.

But Butler is not the only district facing declining enrollment. Each district in the county, except for Seneca Valley, has seen a gradual decrease over the last five years. The education department projects decreases for all the county's districts, except Mars, which is expected to increase by about 50 students in the next five years.

School board member Suzie Bradrick is hopeful the numbers will rebound.

“These projections are good, but we're going to prove them wrong. People are going to come back to Butler,” she said.

School board member Bill Halle said the continuing decreases will force the board to continue to evaluate the use of its buildings, like it did in 2015 when it consolidated and closed several elementary schools.

“If we use the 421 figure we were given today, in 12 years we will have 1,000 less students and I wonder how that plays into our planning,” he said.