In the land of public education, Thursday is the day schools in Colorado add up how many students are in their seats. State lawmakers use the data to determine school funding.

While it won’t happen this school year or maybe even this decade, Academy School District 20 is steadily marching toward taking over bragging rights as the largest school district in the Pikes Peak region.

Colorado Springs School District 11 has had the title since it formed out of the first school that was established on the county’s west side in 1862. But a change in demographics has led D-11 to shrink by about 4 percent in the past five years.

D-11’s official fall enrollment last school year was 28,332, while D-20’s was 24,578.

Becoming the largest district is “not something we think about,” D-20 Superintendent Mark Hatchell said Wednesday. “We think about having available seats for all the new students.”

D-20 projects the fall count will show 500 more students this year, pushing enrollment over 25,000. As a result, district officials are discussing a bond issue for the November 2016 ballot, Hatchell said.

A long-range capital planning committee is forming to solicit community input about building new schools and improving existing ones, he said.

“We’re up about 7,000 students since our last bond issue 14 years ago,” Hatchell said. “We have a number of new subdivisions – The Farm, by New Life Church and North Fork at Briargate by Pine Creek High, which both have around 700 homes going in.”

Construction also is continuing at Cordera, Wolf Ranch and Flying Horse developments.

With assessed property values increasing, Hatchell said D-20 might be able to maintain its existing mill levy and not ask voters for higher property taxes. Instead, officials might seek approval to use the money the district is collecting to build new schools.

“With the end of the Great Recession, there seems to be a lot of pent-up demand for new homes in our school district, and we’re certainly seeing that,” he said.

New housing development farther east, along with the acquisition of a statewide online charter high school, led to a 33 percent increase in enrollment over the past five years in another local district, Falcon School District 49.

It’s now the region’s third largest with 19,552 students last school year, up from 14,708 in 2010.

In fact, D-11 officials predict that D-49’s enrollment will someday overtake both D-11 and D-20.

“We are landlocked and have no raw ground to build on, and a lot of our population is older,” said Devra Ashby, D-11 spokeswoman. “Falcon has a huge plot of land they can build on, and if we continue to experience a growing population, that will happen.”

Could be, said D-49 spokesman Matt Meister, particularly with new housing in the Banning Lewis Ranch development.

The district projects just under 20,000 students in the fall count, with nearly 21,500 by 2020. A new charter school focusing on technical trades will open in D-49 next fall.

“We plan for the future to be smart about our growth,” Meister said, citing the refinancing of D-49’s general bond debt to pay it off in early 2017.

Meanwhile, a study from several years ago predicted D-11’s declining enrollment eventually would taper off and stabilize.

Enrollment dropped by more than 500 students in the fall of 2013, after the district closed two elementary schools and repurposed a high school. D-11 expects this year’s enrollment to be around the same as last year.

The Oct. 1 count day is not as significant as in the past because there is now a “count window,” during which schools can tally students. This year’s window started Sept. 24 and runs through Oct. 8.

The Colorado Department of Education will release official 2015-2016 enrollment figures in January.