Local school enrollment shrinking

Serious

implications

projected for school system

By KREMENA TODOROVA

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- Enrollment in local schools is expected to decline nearly 30 percent between now and the year 2011-2012, when current downward trends should level off, according to projections shared by Superintendent Harold Remme.

If the projections materialize, they will translate into a "loss" of about 45 percent of the student body from the year 1997-1998, the first year of Remme's analysis.

Stated numerically, New Ulm is evolving from a school system with about 3,250 students in 1997-1998 to one with about 1,780 in 2011-2012 and beyond. This year, about 2,350 students are enrolled in local public schools.

The biggest drop systemwide is expected to occur in 2006-2007, when the four public school sites are expected to lose about 115 students combined. Stabilization trends will begin setting in over the following three years; these trends will be taking a firmer hold in 2011-2012 and will persist through 2014-2015, the last year of analysis.

In the years covered by the projections, the school system will be seeing what can be described as a "wash-through" effect -- earlier enrollment declines on the elementary-school level will be "washing through" it and reflecting on secondary-level enrollment.

More specifically:

* A detailed breakdown of the numbers shows that enrollment has already stabilized in grades K-3, at around 540 students.

* Overall, enrollment numbers in grades 4-6 will be either dropping slightly or staying stable during the years covered by the projections. The numbers will bottom out around 2006-2007, stabilizing around 400-405 students, from the current 490.

* In grades 7-8, the steep downward trend will persist through 2007-2008, to steady at about 280 students, from the current 370.

* In grades 9-11, enrollment will spiral down through 2011-2012, to stabilize around 560 students, down from the current 940. This will be 60 percent of the high school's current size.

To come up with these numbers, the school system tracks birth, migration, aging and other demographic trends. It also looks at former-year patterns of student mobility between private and public schools, and the loss of upper-grade students to college-campus classes.

Like other projections, the enrollment analysis does not account for unpredictable economic reversals -- or education system changes such as the opening or closure of alternative schools.

The enrollment changes are expected to have serious implications for the school system, both in the short and long term, notes Remme.

In the short term, the loss of 90-100 students per year will result in the loss of $600,000 to $700,000 in state funds tied to enrollment in each of the next two years.

The enrollment declines will have an even more profound budgetary effect when coupled with special and community education funding cuts, and especially with the state's decision not to adjust school funding to inflation -- which will cost local schools between a $250,000 and $380,000 a year in previously-anticipated funds.

Over the longer term, local residents and the school system will need to evaluate and prioritize a number of responses to the enrollment shifts, says Remme.

Some areas of potential change and possibilities to be considered include: the variety of course offerings in upper grades (potential alternate-year course offerings; options for college, versus workforce, bound students); balancing curricular and extra-curricular options; class sizes; changes in grade-level clustering (potentially grouping middle-school students with younger or older grades); scheduling (a seven or eight-period schedule versus a block or a combination schedule); staffing adjustments; and facility changes.

"I feel we need to be pro-active, rather than reactive," says Remme.