I got this email today:
Hello Harry 🙂
Today’s “All is Well” blog post has prompted me to write you this e-mail.
Attached are the open enrollment figures from 2006-2007, 2007-2008, and
2008-2009. I had requested this info (almost two years ago) [from the State] because I
wanted to see for myself whether or not it was true that there was a “mass
exodus of students” from ISD 709 due to the Red Plan. (Unfortunately, I
don’t have the figures for 2009-2010 or 2010-2011.)If I understand the data correctly, each year since the Red Plan’s
implementation, there has been an increase in the number of students open
enrolling OUT of the DSD and a decrease in the number of students open
enrolling into the DSD:2006-2007: 371 OUT (105 in)
2007-2008: 405 OUT (109 in)
2008-2009: 428 OUT (85 in)When you calculate the figures:
OUT: 371 + 405 + 428 = 1204
IN: 105 + 109 + 85 = 299
The difference is: 1204 – 299 = 905 students who no longer attend ISD 709Now if you take those students (905) and multiply it by $5,500 (approx.
p/student funding?) = $4,977,500! That’s $4,977,500 which the DSD has lost
To which I replied this evening as follows:
You’ve got the general idea and the figure you’ve come up with must be pretty close. There are lots of data points that would perturb your caculations one way or the other. What were the grades of the students? K students are reimbursed at a smaller figure. 1-3 students generate more. 7-12 sudents generate the most revenue for the District. The calculation is per student per day away. If the students are in a charter school a private school or are being home schooled we lose the revenue too but its not considered open enrollment but I’m not sure what the fiscal implications of that are.
Your figures are slightly different (and not as bad) as the ones provided by Tawnyea to the School Board. That could be because she is using figures from some different time of the year or because she’s using some slightly different definition of open enrollment. I’m not sure she’s using strict open enrollment data.
You can see by your figures how the District is in a vicious cycle circling the drain. Students leave, money is lost, we lay off teachers, classes get bigger, students leave…etc. etc. etc. until everything collapses into a black hole.
At tonight’s meeting we learned that the ISD 709 budget needs to be cut by $7.3 million. How many more students will that drive out? How much more in cuts will that prompt? Expect to read about an $8 million cut followed by a ten million cut followed by an even bigger one as students are stampeeded out of our schools.
If we used that figure of $5,500 as the state revenue sent us for each student then the $7.3 million would translate into over 1,300 lost students.
Harry
