Wednesday, December 30, 2015

ROY-HART'S DECLINING ENROLLMENT

Yesterday the New York State Education Department released data for all school districts concerning the 2014-2015 school year that looks at the make-up of student enrollment. It breaks it down by gender, race, disabilities, economics, and grade levels.  Read it at http://data.nysed.gov/enrollment.php?year=2015&instid=800000041485

The real take home from the report is the sharp decline in enrollment at Royalton-Hartland, an outcome of an aging local population and young people moving out-of-area or out-of-state for greener pastures economically.

Pay special attention to how the grade levels drop off to enrollments below 100.

Sixth through twelfth saw a peak of 128 and a low of 100, averaging out at 115 students per grade.

For that same school year, the kindergarten through fifth numbers were incredibly low by Roy-Hart standards. The average for those six grades was 90 students. Compared to sixth through twelfth that's a drop of 25 students per class or 22%.

If you want to scare yourself even more, look at the enrollment for kindergarten in 2014-2015. 79. Yes, only SEVENTY-NINE students.

Student enrollment is on the decline at Roy-Hart and it's trending badly, far rivaling the 6% drop that occurred between 2000 and 2015.

So, in the coming years, don't scratch your heads when school boards and school officials have to make different, interesting and difficult decisions concerning budgets, services and consolidation (will we be doing more with Barker, even becoming one district?). It's been a tough go the past 15 years....what will the next 15 bring?