Board discusses enrollment drop

From the Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2008 edition of the Northwest Herald:

Board discusses enrollment drop
By DIANA SROKA - dsroka@nwherald.com

JOHNSBURG – The start of the 2008-09 school year brought the steepest enrollment decrease in District 12 schools in five years.

According to district statistics, 93 fewer students are enrolled for the 2008-09 school year than were enrolled during the 2007-08 school year.

“We believe it’s because of the economic crisis,” Superintendent Dan Johnson said. “The new homes aren’t going up as fast as they previously projected.”

The district board discussed the enrollment drop at length at its Tuesday meeting. All board members were present at the meeting.

The district generates enrollment projections each year based on home growth and the live birth rate in the area. Last year’s projections estimated an enrollment drop of 33, which was 60 students shy of the enrollment numbers this year, Johnson said.

Compared to the number of students enrolled during the 2007-08 school year, enrollment at Bush Elementary School dropped by eight students. Enrollment at Johnsburg High School dropped by 21 students, and enrollment dropped by 26 students at Ringwood School Primary Center. The largest enrollment dip was at Johnsburg Junior High School, where 38 fewer students are enrolled this year, compared to last year.

District officials were most shocked by the drop in the number of kindergarten students, which went from 150 students during the 2007-08 year to 129 for this school year.

“Our immediate reaction was ‘St. Johns must have opened up another section [of kindergarten],’ ” Johnson said at the meeting.

The enrollment drop means District 12 also might see a drop in funding for the 2009-10 school year. Johnson said the district won’t know how much of an effect the drop will have on finances until December, when equalized assessed values of properties are determined.

In the meantime, district officials suspect the primary cause of the drop is home foreclosures. They said it was likely that families were moving out of the district and into less expensive areas such as McHenry or Lake County schools.

“A lot of the families I talked to went to McHenry or Fox Lake,” Dave Lawson, the district business manager, said.

However, there is an upside to the drop.

“Class sizes are beautiful,” Cathy Neiss, principal of Ringwood Primary, said.

The smaller class sizes allow teachers to pay more individual attention to students and differentiate their instruction methods, Johnson said. However, he said he would continue to investigate the number of home foreclosures and how that might have affected the district.

He hopes to have exact figures by October.