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Enrollment dips reported by lakes area schools
Staff Writer While area school enrollment figures may fluctuate during the upcoming weeks, there is a noticeable decrease in enrollment reported at a few area school districts, including Brainerd, Crosby-Ironton, Staples-Motley and Pequot Lakes.
Brainerd's budget cuts and closure of open enrollment for all but the three upper-level grades may have been the major factor in Brainerd's enrollment decline and helped create some of the increase in student enrollment reported at area parochial schools.
However, some staff members at these school districts said Friday that their districts' decline may be attributed to the graduation of a larger-than-usual senior class last May, replaced by a smaller kindergarten class this fall.
For example, while C-I schools reported 90 kindergartners this fall, an 11-student increase from last fall, along with increases in six other grades, the district lost 45 students alone when last year's 134 seniors were replaced this year by 89 students in the senior class. C-I schools reported a districtwide 49-student decrease this fall.
Since the C-I School Board conservatively projected enrollment at 1,070 students for this fall, an actual enrollment of 1,171 students is good news, said C-I Superintendent Jamie Skjeveland. He said this number will drop slightly, possibly to 1,150 students, after students enrolled in the Range Area Alternative Program and those attending college through the post-secondary enrollment option are later subtracted from this total.
"There are a lot of smiling faces right now because we thought it was going to be bad and we prepared for the worst and it wasn't as bad as we had thought it was going to be," Skjeveland said. "We should be celebrating, but we can't lose sight of the issues we're going to be facing the following year. All of this news, and it is good news, doesn't put us out of the danger zone. That is why the school board is moving forward with a referendum because in spite of these numbers and figures it gets back to state aid is simply not keeping up with the amount our expenditures are going up each year."
Brainerd Superintendent Steve Razidlo said he and his staff expected enrollment to decrease between 100-150 students and as of the Sept. 2 enrollment figures the district has experienced a 127-student decline from last fall. Razidlo said he suspects that several of those students, particularly students in the primary grade levels, did transfer to area parochial schools. He said the larger senior class that graduated last May and a smaller kindergarten class entering school this fall also played a factor. He said the district hasn't seen a significant increase in homeschooling since last year.
Razidlo said the Brainerd district has been a growing district but suggested that declining enrollment at several Brainerd area school districts may be part of a larger trend of declining student enrollment in outstate Minnesota, which the state has projected.
"It was a really good week," Razidlo said of the first week of school. "We're very thankful to students and parents in the community for working with the staff, who is working very, very hard. It was, overall, a very smooth opening."
JODIE TWEED may be reached at jodie.tweed@brainerddispatch.com or 855-5858.
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