photo by: Dylan Lysen/Lawrence Journal-World

Lawrence Public Schools district offices pictured in April 2021.

Updated at 4:58 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 12

The Lawrence school district’s recently completed annual enrollment count shows a dramatic decline of hundreds of students compared with last year’s count, and the amount of decline in just one year is what a consultant recently had predicted for an entire five-year period.

The district’s enrollment report is completed on Sept. 20 of each year, and this year’s report shows that district enrollment has dropped by 299 students. The total enrollment for 2022 after an audit from the Kansas State Department of Education was 10,957, compared with this year’s initial, unaudited enrollment figure of 10,658.

The year-over-year decline is a trend in the last five years or so, during which the school district has been losing hundreds of students. For example, the district had 11,609 students in the 2019 count, and enrollment had dropped to 10,975 by the 2021 count, meaning the district lost more than 600 students over that period.

Considering last year’s audited count, however, that streak was broken for at least one school year between 2021 and 2022. During that period, enrollment changed by 18 students. And prior to the audit, enrollment had dropped by only a single student.

The whole picture of why there has once again been a large enrollment decline likely won’t be clear until the district team has a chance to look at this year’s enrollment data more closely, Superintendent Anthony Lewis told the Journal-World Thursday afternoon. But for now, Lewis said one potential cause could be the impact of low birth rates, which he said are affecting not just Lawrence but the whole country.

“We had 945 seniors last year, and then this year we had 674 kindergartners come in,” Lewis said. “That’s a huge variation there, in terms of our seniors that have left us versus the kindergartners that are coming in.”

Additionally, Lewis said the district’s virtual school numbers are down, with early indications showing that many of those students are transitioning from full-time to part-time attendance. The headcount tracks the district’s full-time equivalent enrollment (FTE), and a student counts toward that tally if they have spent an average of 360 minutes a day in a classroom setting per week. Lewis said the school board will have a work session at its next meeting to talk about the direction of the district’s virtual school.

The data review Lewis mentioned will provide some additional context, like how many new students the district has gained beyond just the incoming kindergarten class. He said it’ll also give the district a view of how many students have left the district besides graduating seniors.

Lewis said the district is at the same time experiencing some growth in other areas that won’t necessarily be represented in the enrollment headcount. For example, he said the district still has a waitlist of students hoping to join the free public Montessori program at New York Elementary, which is in its first year. Lewis said the school district is also excited about the potential of Liberty Memorial Central Middle School shifting to a special science, technology and arts curriculum in the future.

“There’s some exciting things going on that we’re doing also to attract families to Lawrence, and those that may have left during the pandemic that chose to either homeschool or enroll in private schools, looking at some ways we can attract them back to the district,” Lewis said.

School board president Kelly Jones echoed some of Lewis’ responses as to possible reasons for the enrollment decline in a response to questions from the Journal-World, including a declining birth rate. Jones said Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health shows a fairly steady decline on that front since 2012, and she agreed that enrollment challenges are going to happen in years when an outgoing senior class is larger than the incoming kindergarten class.

Jones also said that when that declining birth rate is coupled with Lawrence’s affordable housing crisis, it makes the district’s enrollment trend even lower. That’s why she said she’s keeping just as close an eye on the Lawrence City Commission race as she is the school board race in the upcoming Nov. 7 general election.

“City and county elected officials play a direct role in shaping the housing built in Lawrence,” Jones said. “Our USD 497 families and employees must have access to affordable housing. The school board may have a robust strategic plan to attract and retain families to our schools, but it starts with can they afford to live here?”

Last year, as the Journal-World reported, consultants hired by the Lawrence school district projected that enrollment would decline by about 300 students, but that projection was for the next five years, not for a single year. Members of a committee tasked with making budget recommendations were then asked to consider potential school closures. The district ended up closing two elementary schools, Pinckney and Broken Arrow.

The consultants with RSP & Associates specifically projected that the overall enrollment in the district would decrease by 318 students by the 2027-28 school year.

Jones told the Journal-World that “For several years, RSP has told the Board and community to be prepared” for the possibility of declining kindergarten enrollment. She said that to prepare for that trend, the district was trying to make changes that “benefit our current students while attracting new families,” such as the New York Elementary Montessori program and the upcoming curriculum redesign at Liberty Memorial Central Middle School.

In a 6-1 vote Monday night, the Lawrence school board approved a new contract with RSP to provide the district with enrollment projections and other demographic-related data.

School board member Carole Cadue-Blackwood, who cast the dissenting vote, said she opposed the contract because she questioned the reliability of RSP’s work, as the Journal-World reported.