With the new enrollment figures the District is running well ahead of the projections provided by MGT of America in its June 2008 assessment of the District’s facilities needs. MGT estimated that elementary enrollment would not reach 6,222 until 2017. With 6,326 elementary students enrolled last month, the District has already exceeded that projection. According to Superintendent Peter Wharton, other districts around the state are also seeing increases in elementary enrollment. “Sioux Falls, for example, had a big increase in kindergarten this year.” This growth in enrollments makes efforts to deal with long-run facilities needs even more urgent for the Board and the Administration.

District Reaches Out

High school enrollments were up by 39 students in September compared to September 2008. Anticipating implementation of the state’s new mandatory attendance law, the District reached out this past summer to 16- and 17-year olds who had dropped out of high school. Under the auspices of Project U-Turn, district representatives knocked on the doors of nearly 300 families in Rapid City to  encourage students to come back to school voluntarily rather than be forced back into the classroom by the courts. “Many of the approximately 70 returning students are a product of those home visits,” says Katie Bray, assistant superintendent for student achievement.

The net increase of only 39 students at the high school level is far short of the 200-300 that some board members and administrators had predicted. The full impact of the mandatory attendance law, however, may not be felt for some time. According to Wharton, young people affected by the law are still filtering into the District. “Some walk in off the street. Some are referred by the courts. Others came from our recruiting efforts.” The District is working to ensure that all of these students who have come back to school get personal attention. “Each returning student,” says Bray, “is taken through a process and a personal learning plan is created.”

Board to Consider Joining Funding Fight

In addition to the presentation on enrollments, the Board will also vote on two options for joining the effort to seek a ruling from the courts that the Legislature is falling short of its constitutional mandate to provide sufficient funding for education. The first resolution proposes that the Rapid City Area Schools join the South Dakota Coalition of Schools, which represents 92 school districts in the state. The organization commissioned the 2005 “Adequacy Study” of school funding. This resolution proposes that the District make a $10,000 contribution to the Coalition to support its efforts “to ensure that the constitutional rights of the children within our district are being protected.”  The second resolution also proposes that the District join the Coalition and provides for paying annual dues of $600.

New Budget Format to be Presented

Business Manager Dave Janak will also be presenting the new template for the District’s budget. The new template was developed by consultant Jeff Partridge to make it easier for citizens and board members to understand the policy priorities implicit in the budget document. For more information on this plan, read Kayla Gahagan’s October 10, 2009 article in the Rapid City Journal.

The new enrollment figures and the Coalition resolutions will be discussed by the Board of Education at its regular meeting on Thursday, October 15. To accommodate the schedule for parent/teacher conferences, the meeting will start at 7:30 p.m. at the City/School Administration Center on Sixth Street. A copy of the full agenda is available on the District’s website. Enrollments at specific schools can be viewed here on the District’s enrollment report: Enrollment Report 9 29 09