Enrollment in Durham's public schools grew by 262 students -- less than 1 percent -- since this time last year, according to figures released this week.

As of Friday, the 20th day of school, 31,981 children in kindergarten through high school were enrolled in one of the district's 46 schools.

The actual enrollment was only slightly higher than Durham officials were expecting. Predicting the population was difficult, made complicated by a recent reassignment, said Ike Thomas, executive director of student assignment.

"We felt reasonably comfortable with the overall numbers, but from school to school, we were sort of guessing because of the reassignment," Thomas said.

The small increase in students could allow the district to continue to catch up with an unexpected growth spurt two years ago that added 745 students. It was the district's largest increase ever and put some students into mobile classrooms.

Even in the first days of school this year, most of Durham's schools already were at or beyond capacity, according to figures released this month.

The growth in Durham is slightly lower than in some other Triangle districts.

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro school system grew from 10,944 students last year to 11,123 students enrolled Friday, an increase of 1.6 percent.

Orange County Schools saw a slightly higher increase of 1.8 percent to an enrollment of 6,863.

Wake County, a district with nearly 128,000 students, is expected to see a much larger increase, though enrollment data will not be released until next week.

If Wake County's school district continues to exceed predicted growth as it has in past years, the district could surpass Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools to become the largest in the state.

Each district in the state tracks enrollment through the first 20 days of school and sends the data to the state. The numbers are used to determine how much money each district gets.

In Durham, the schools got 209 more students than officials were expecting, according to projected and actual enrollments.

The difference means that the district can hire eight to 10 more teachers, Thomas said. At schools such as Lakewood Elementary, which enrolled 81 more students than it expected for a total of 344, some classes could be reorganized to incorporate new faculty, Thomas said.

At schools such as Carrington Middle School, which has 117 fewer students than expected, some positions will have to be eliminated or left vacant, Thomas said. In rare cases in the past, some teachers have been moved to other schools, he said.

A change in teachers would be disruptive after a student has gotten used to a teacher for a month, Thomas said. But the number of students that could be affected by such change is minimal.

"The idea, really, is to get [students] in the right place and to have the right staff and resources in place from the beginning," Thomas said. "I think, generally, we've done a pretty good job with that."

(Staff writers T. Keung Hui, Meiling Arounnarath and Patrick Winn contributed to this report.)