Alanna Oswald posted on Facebook that she has been trying to get these figures for ages. They come from Jana Hollingsworth’s story about how ISD 709 is trying to claw back its outward bound open enrollment students. What has happened since the Long Range Facilities Plan (Red Plan) has been a great exodus of Duluth students to other schools. I’ve tried to guess at the outflow. I’ve suggested that we have lost 10 to 15%. Jana reports: “30 percent of Duluth district residents were enrolled elsewhere.”
The largest number of those students attend the Edison charter schools and that was true well before the Red Plan which some board members hoped would lure them back. Instead they built a new school too and took even more of our students since we had no agreement for an enrollment cap with them.
When I retired from the school board my recollection is that we had a surplus of about 500 open enrolled students meaning that more kids were coming into Duluth from outlying school districts than leaving.
This chart leaves out the Duluth students enrolled in the Proctor District which has sent busses into Duluth. A hasty check of Wikipedia shows that Proctor has about 2000 students and Jana’s story reports that 18% of them come from Duluth. That would be another 360 lost Duluth students to add to the chart above.
As the title suggests the idea of sending our buses into the neighboring districts to lure the students back was Annie Harala’s and was prompted by parents of western students who thought we should reciprocate. I guess I can’t complain since the costs of sending our busses in search of new students has been described as nominal. Whether they will fill up is another matter.
