DOUGLAS - It's cold outside as snow falls, the beginning of what forecasters say could be the first big storm of the season here.

Dozens of second graders line up at colored cones in the Douglas Primary School gym, wiggling into pink, red and blue coats, hefting sizable backpacks onto their little shoulders, preparing for a morning trek out of the cozy gym into the cold, up steel ramps and into their modular classrooms.

Principal Brent Notman said the outside buildings required some creative thinking on the part of his staff. Students need to be monitored, safety becomes a growing concern and, of course, the route cuts in a little on teaching time each day.

But the modulars were the only solution when enrollment increased nearly 20 percent in the past two years, or by 70 students.

"Two years ago we were at around 325," Notman said. His school covers kindergarten through second grades. "Today's enrollment is 394. I don't foresee it slacking off."

Forty-one percent of that total is kindergarten students.

The school added one kindergarten teacher this year to keep class sizes around 18 students, Notman said. However, incoming kindergartners are hard to estimate.

"We were anticipating about 145, which is what we had the previous year," he said. "Well, lo and behold, we had 162 at the beginning of the first week."

Talking with his peers around the state about the increases, Notman realized his school is indeed growing faster than most.

"Almost everybody I share my numbers with raises their eyebrows and says, 'Wow,'" he said.

He said he had to chuckle earlier this year at the perspective he gained as the Converse district announced it was up 164 students overall, while the much-larger Natrona County schools were wondering what to do with a 100-student increase.

The district added the three modular units at the primary school, holding six classrooms. Another modular is situated at the intermediate school, grades 3-5, to accommodate special programming such as gifted and talented activities. District Superintendent Dan Espeland estimates the primary school modulars could accommodate another 5 percent enrollment increase, or another 40 to 60 students, although the district would also have to supply additional teachers.

Beyond classrooms and teachers, the increases have taxed extras such as lunches, physical education and music lessons. The school has opened the stage in the gym for early and late lunches, so gym class can continue into those periods. The shuffling has worked, so far, Notman acknowledged, but the future holds some questions.

"We love the kids, and our focus is the kids. It's not on the space," he said. "We've been working with the School Facilities Commission, and our long-term goal is to hopefully construct an additional elementary building."

Instead of a new primary school handling grades kindergarten through second, the district wants to build a new elementary school on the same site as the present intermediate school. The new building would house 18 classrooms of grades 4 and 5. The existing intermediate school would handle grades 2 and 3. The primary school would lose second grade, offering classes for kindergarten and first grades.

"If that happens, I think it would be a long-term solution - at least the first phase of a long-term solution," Notman said. "But if we keep growing at the rate we have been, I don't know what we'll do in the interim before the new construction."