Slower than expected growth means school budget trim

Enrollment falls 223 students short

Sometimes, good news isn’t all that good.

For Lawrence schools, this year’s enrollment is 57 students ahead of last year’s. Growth is better than decline.

But the school district’s 2005-06 budget is based on projections that pegged the increase at 280 students.

“It looks like we were off by 223 students,” said Tom Bracciano, the district’s director of operations and facility planning.

Because the district receives about $4,000 in state aid for each student, the 223-student shortfall means the district has overbudgeted by $850,000 to $900,000.

“We’ll have to lower the budget,” said school board member Craig Grant. “It looks like we’re staffed for 223 students who aren’t there.”

How the pending shortfall will affect the district’s salary negotiations with its teachers remains to be seen.

Three Lawrence Free State High School sophomores and friends meet at their lockers between classes Thursday. From left are Alli McDermott, Sarah Craft and Kelsey O'Brien. The school district released enrollment numbers Thursday that will determine state aid for the district.

“Negotiations were going on and the offer was on the table before this happened,” said board member Sue Morgan, referring to news of the pending shortfall. “I, personally, would not anticipate the offer being rescinded in response to this dilemma.”

She added, “Basically, what this means is that instead of the district getting $6.2 million in additional state aid, we’ll be getting around $5.4 million.”

Still, Morgan warned that the 223-student miscalculation represents about 10 classrooms and the potential for 10 fewer teaching positions.

The district has promised to raise teachers’ take-home pay by $2,186,600. Teachers have yet to accept the offer.

Morgan is a member of the district’s negotiation team. Negations resume Sept. 30.

Morgan said changes in the district’s enrollment had become increasingly difficult to predict.

“We had more than 700 students leave the district altogether,” since last school year, she said. “Now, more than 500 students moved in to take their place. But how do you predict that?”

If not for the Lawrence Virtual School, the district likely would have suffered a net loss in enrollment.

According to the district’s Sept. 20 head count, 331 students – 259 elementary, 72 junior high – were enrolled in the Virtual School, a 164-student increase over last year’s tally.

“That’s where the growth was,” Bracciano said. “We have fewer kids coming to school, sitting in seats.”

Bracciano noted several troubling trends within the enrollment numbers:

¢ “Last year, we had 720 kindergartners,” he said. “This year, we dropped off to 689.”

¢ “We had a bump K-through-3 number last year. It’s not there this year.”

¢ Junior high enrollment fell by 64 students.

¢ “Because of all the development going on around Langston Hughes (elementary school), we thought we’d see more of an influx of kids than we did,” he said.

¢ “We’re also starting to see some neighborhoods age out,” he said. “By that I mean, families whose kids have grown up are staying put. They’d probably like to move, but Lawrence housing is expensive so they don’t. And because they don’t, families with kids don’t move in.”

Still, Lawrence fared better than most districts.

“We haven’t seen the exact data yet,” said Jim Hays, a research specialist at the Kansas Association of School Boards. “But for seven years in a row, more than 60 percent of the school districts in Kansas have lost enrollment. I feel confident in saying this will be the eighth year.”

Lawrence, Hays said, should note that Manhattan, also a “university town,” has lost enrollment for 12 straight years.

“Shawnee Mission is down again,” he said. “That’s 10 years in a row for them.”

Much of the decline, he said, is driven by fertility rates.

“Look at your grandparents and how many kids they had,” he said. “And then look at your parents and how many kids they had. Then look at yourself.”