lcramer posted on January 28, 2011 12:27
Enrollment numbers are falling district-wide, leading to a shortage in funding and potential cuts to classes and programs.
In just one academic year, the high school lost 155 students, going from a population of 2,322 in 2007-2008 to 2,167 in 2008-2009. District enrollment is down 592 students in the past decade, 175 of those since last year.
As enrollment numbers decline, funding goes down with them.
“We get a certain amount of money for every student we have in the district, so fewer students means less funding,” assistant superintendent Craig Kupferberg said. “If you continue to lose students, you have to continue to take a look at the staff that you hire as well as the programs you offer.”
As the amount of students at the school decreases, it limits opportunities and could lead to greater drops in enrollment.
"As more kids leave, it causes constraints in the schedule even more, and eventually you have to cut things out of the schedule,” high school principal Victoria Swartz said. “It begins to have a domino effect because if those kids leave, it creates a situation where you offer fewer opportunities, which then causes more kids to leave.”
The option of choosing to go to another school has increased in popularity.
The number of students who live in Findlay, but are enrolled in other school districts, has jumped from 54 during the 2000-2001 school year to a current 298.
While there are students who live in other districts that open enroll to Findlay, 91 more students have left the city schools than entered it this year.
"As students consider open enrolling to other districts, they need to remember that there won't be as many opportunities there," Swartz said. "They may be able to get a class in their schedule that they couldn't here, but they're going to lose other things as well."
When students leave the district course options decrease even further because when there are fewer people it causes some classes to be offered only one period per day.
“As enrollment declines it causes us to have more singular classes and the more singular classes you have, the more constricted students' schedules get," Swartz said. "As we develop the master schedule, we first put in the singular classes, classes that are only offered one period a day, because there are only enough kids for one class."
When there are more singular classes, the chances that a student will want to take two singulars that are offered during the same period rise and they are forced to choose between them.
“As those singular classes conflict, student frustration increases and so a student may feel that since they can't take the classes they want, they may go somewhere else,” Swartz said.
As some choose to open enroll out of Findlay, the student population continues to decrease, while surrounding school districts, such as Liberty-Benton, maintain fairly constant enrollment numbers.
As district enrollment spirals into a downward trend, school administrators will carefully consider its effects.
“I don’t know of anything that would reverse the trend,” Kupferberg said. “It’s a challenge that needs to be addressed.
"We’re here to serve students and whenever you have a drastic change in any direction, you need to assess how and in what manner you’re serving students."