The Effingham County School System’s enrollment has topped 11,000 students.

A total of 11,046 kindergarten-12th grade students were enrolled in the county’s 13 schools as of the seventh day of class, Superintendent Randy Shearouse told the Effingham County Board of Education last week.

“This is the first time that I know of we’ve been over 11,000 students without (counting) pre-K,” Shearouse said.

In addition to the K-12 students, more than 500 children are in the school system’s pre-kindergarten and preschool intervention programs, Shearouse reported.

The enrollment of 11,046 is an increase of 108 students from the 10,938 on last year’s seventh day of class. The enrollment at the end of last school year was 10,948.

“This is a pretty big year for us,” Shearouse said.

South Effingham Elementary is the county’s largest elementary school, with 702 students. Blandford, which decreased by 145 students following the redistricting of three schools, is next at 689 students and Marlow is right behind at 682.

The smallest enrollment is Sand Hill Elementary’s 542, and Springfield Elementary (590) is the only other school with fewer than 600 students. Guyton is the fourth-largest elementary school with 646 students, followed by Rincon with 631 and Ebenezer with 609.

“The good news is we have room to grow at every elementary school in the district,” Shearouse said.

South Effingham also has the largest middle school, at 980 students. Effingham County and Ebenezer middle schools are nearly identical at 801 and 798, respectively.

South Effingham High’s athletics and other extra-curricular programs have moved up to Class AAAAA this year. But at 1,529 students, SEHS is the smallest school in its new region.

Effingham County High is more than 300 students larger than South Effingham at 1,847, despite having 42 fewer students than this time last year. SEHS' enrollment is up by 56 students from a year ago.