BERKELEY — City schools here are just about full and officials are scrambling to find space for another 250 kids in the next two years with a goal of creating six new classrooms across the district.

“It’s amazing, the number of young families who have moved into my south Berkeley neighborhood near San Pablo Park in the last two years,” said school board member Karen Hemphill during a November meeting to vet options for finding more space. “I can’t walk a block without seeing young couples with strollers or the obvious indication of children’s books or toys on porches.”

Berkeley schools currently have 9,797 students, according to district officials. The numbers have been rising every year since 2008, said Admissions Manager Francisco Martinez, who credited an improving public school district that has drawn more students from area private schools.

Berkeley schools Spokesman Mark Coplan said the increase in students also is due to the state-mandated transitional kindergarten program in public schools, which educates kids who turn 5 years old between Sept. 5 and Dec. 5, an age considered too young to be with other 5-year-olds who have birthdays earlier in the year.

In addition, Coplan said the district is getting more private school kids because of the high cost of private schools and the Berkeley school district “is getting better and better.”

The school board will meet Dec. 10 to narrow its options for finding space for the new students. Those options are: consolidating all seven transitional kindergarten classes from three sites across the city to one; taking classrooms at various schools currently used for things like art, music or dance and turning them into regular classrooms; and creating a whole new elementary school at the alternative high school, which would be combined with the adult school.

The politically loaded option of increasing class size is not seriously being considered at the moment, but it remains an option after a wider community discussion, said Coplan. Berkeley currently has a target of 20 students for each class in kindergarten through third grade; 26 in fourth and fifth grades and 28 in the high school.

Although a potentially difficult sell, raising the class size in kindergarten through third grade from 20 to 24 students would free up 20 classrooms said Facilities Director Lew Jones.

Mariah Castle, a theater teacher at Malcolm X Elementary School, told the school board she does not want to see more arts classes taken away for pure academics.

Her school already has lost classrooms formerly dedicated to art and dance because the school is growing, she said. If any more are taken, “it will be impossible for us to do quality work.”

“These theater and art programs have taken a direct hit,” Castle told the board. “We lost two of our core art classrooms this year and we’ve had to scramble to make minimal space we have left to accommodate our nearly 600 students. We, the art teachers, have worked mightily to make remaining spaces work. Sometimes it means we are in the cafeteria, sometimes in the auditorium, hallways or outside. We are often moving between four places in a single day.”

School Board President Josh Daniels told an audience at its meeting earlier this month that “there is no obvious single solution to this and there is always a downside. So we have to make decisions based on the pros and cons.”

Sixth-grader Eliza Fosket-Hydes, a student at Martin Luther King Junior Middle School, had some very strong ideas on what the school board should not do.

“Increasing class size not only makes teachers feel overwhelmed, but from my experience, I know it’s hard to focus when class sizes are large,” Fosket-Hydes told the board. “It also makes a big impact on students when you take away such things as art rooms. Next time you think about taking away another art room that is special, I hope you will stop and think about the consequences for students.”

Contact reporter Doug Oakley at 925-234-1699. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/douglasoakley