The intersection of school funding, curriculum development and enrollment creates a difficult mix of information to understand. I propose that enrollment trends and attrition should be a fundamental key performance indicator to evaluate to the health of a district.
Student enrollment is a simple way to measure if your initiatives and educational goals are resonating with families with children in school and those looking to educate their children in your district.
Currently using business models is in vogue when discussing about education. To be honest, a true business point of view would be to look at schools as a "research and development" division - an area in need of investment without being a profit center. The one are a business approach may be helpful is thinking of students as customers. If we think of them as people who come with a certain amount of state aid and the becomes the district's revenue.
Each district has it's own spend per student ratio. The cost to educate the typical student is not the same as the amount of aid received. The majority of school costs are largely fixed in staff and buildings. That means, how much it costs a district to educate all children across buildings and classrooms is broken down into a per student cost.
For example if your per pupil expenditures are $12,000 a student, adding 2 more students to a class of 18 does not increase the cost of running that classroom or school by $24,000. In fact, you're spreading those fixed costs over more students who are bringing state aid. This increase in funds can bring opportunity to improve offerings and hopefully attract more students.
The reverse is also true, but more problematic. If you have a class of 20 and two students decide to leave, your costs do not go down by $24,000. The fixed costs now need to be covered by the remaining 18 students. With fewer students, you're increasing your per pupil costs and may potentially have to reduce offerings which hurts the ability to attract and retain students.
If we divide the Chapter 70 aid we receive locally by total enrollment, we get about about $3,500 a per student.
This means, if a graduating class starts in 1st grade with 200 students that would equal $8.4 million in aid over the next 12 years.
If 20 of those students leave in 6th grade, that is a loss of $400,000 in revenue over the remainder of their school careers. It's a difficult sum to make up through cutbacks that do not affect students.
We can look at some real world examples locally.
The graduating class of 2023
Enrollment went down 7 students between K and 1st grade. Each of those students were worth about $3,500 a year in state revenue for the next 12 years. That is about $300,000 in lost revenue over that graduating class' career just from that one drop in enrollment.
The next year 4 new students enrolled to that class. Those students bring an additional $154,000 over their customer lifetime if they remain in district.
The same class lost 11 students in 3rd and 4th grade. The enrollment aid that we lost with those students is over $350,000 through the remainder of this high school graduating class' educational experience in our district.
