"We're now having our biggest generation," Perlich said. "We've had record births for eight of the last nine years, and some of those kids are already showing up in the school system."

Some 9.5 percent of Utah's population was under age 5, compared to 6.8 percent of the nation's population. And only 18.9 percent of Utah's population is age 45-64, compared with 24.6 nationally.

And minorities, particularly Hispanics, continued to spur much of the state's population growth.

An estimated 406,348 minorities comprised 16.5 percent of Utah's population in 2005.

Cindy Timothy, who's gearing up to teach preschool at Woodrow Wilson Elementary, has seen the evidence of Utah's changing demographics over her 24-year elementary teaching career, mostly on Salt Lake's west side.

"There's a lot more diversity, I've even noticed the difference in the last five (years)," she said. And she expects Woodrow to be even more diverse.

Diversity can present challenges from communicating with parents who don't speak English to getting young children used to American culture and classrooms.

"As the ethnicity of students has changed the ethnicity of teachers has not necessarily changed," she said. "Especially at a really diverse school like Woodrow, to be up on all the cultures and traditions and idiosyncrasies is a big challenge."

Based on conservative growth estimates, the state's minority share of the population could move to 18 percent by the end of the decade, Perlich said.

"I expect that to be closer to 19 percent by the 2010 Census, maybe 20 percent," Perlich said.

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E-mail: dbulkeley@desnews.com