Forget the 15 student enrollment increase I reported earlier. It may not be even that rosy.
Claudia got to the newspaper on her own and trundled up irritated with the DNT’s reporting on Duluth School enrollment. She noted, quite rightly, that while the story trumpeted 300 new students in the public schools the story’s column of enrollment figures showed an increase in Edison’s enrollment of 140 students and 46 for the Marshall School. Furthermore the numbers for Duluth didn’t seem to match the reporting.
We’ve spent half an hour trying to figure out what the darned Trib numbers mean. Not much it turns out.
The figure at the top of the columns reading Duluth Public Schools (enrollment) gave me my figures for an enrollment jump of 15. I should have looked more closely. Although last year’s figure was listed at 8,696 and this year’s figure was listed as 8,711 and this is an increase of only 15 the numbers given by the Trib seem to be bogus.
Here’s the column of figures reported by the DNT. they include both Edison (a public school but not THE Duluth public schools and Marshall School which is a private school.
…………………………………….last year…this year……Difference
Duluth Public Schools……….8696…….8711……….15
Denfeld High School…………1463…….1292…….-171
East High School……………..1560…….1621……….61
Woodland Middle School……963…….898……….-65
Morgan Park Middle School….703…….698………..-5
Stowe Elementary………………350…….360………..10
Laura MacArthur………………..450…….465…………15
Piedm……………………………….500…….451………..-49
Homecroft………………………..403…….397………….-6
Nettleton…………………………450…….450……………0
Congdon Park…………………….503…….533………….30
Lakewood…………………………284…….272…………-12
Lester park……………………….519…….549…………..30
0
Marshall……………………………419…….465…………..46
Edison……………………………..1070……1210 ……….140
NOTE the 0 between the Duluth public schools and Marshall and Edison is not in the DNT.
My post from two days ago came from a memo the District sent out to School Board members.
Instead of showing school by school enrollment data like the DNT (The Trib wants to make the case that fixed up schools are attracting more kids) The District shows grade by grade enrollments. But what the District reported and the Trib sinks its lips into is pure worm.
The District shows what it projected for this year’s enrollment last year – 8429. That was a lowball figure. So far this year’s numbers show an enrollment of 8,711. Using the “projected” figures leads to a phony conclusion: that the Duluth Public Schools have seen a 282 increase in enrollment. Horse feathers! You can only figure out what the actual increase is by looking at last year’s actual enrollment numbers not lowballed projections.
After half an hour of going over the numbers I’ve concluded that the actual Duluth enrollment figures between last year and this year may have gone down by 137 (Subtract this year’s DNT reported enrollment of 7880 from last year’s reported enrollment of 8566
Coincidentally the figure 8,429 in the second column showing this year’s Sept. enrollment is exactly the same figure as the District’s document shows being projected for this year’s enrollment. Is that a coincidence?
The story seems to herald a particularly big growth of high school students but the DNT’s chart shows a decrease between last year and this year of 110 students. Last year we had 1463 Denfeld Central students plus 1560 East students for a total of 3023. This year we only have 2913 high school students, 1292 at Denfeld and 1621 at East. Again, that’s 110 fewer students. Perhaps this is nothing more than the Trib failing to type all the numbers into its spreadsheet.
Until the Trib clears this up the public has every right to be skeptical, perhaps even hostile. The DNT has to take some heat for this because its getting its blarney from the District without subjecting it to even the most elementary level of scrutiny. That’s how Dr. Dixon got away with murder for six years. Some of us are growing weary of this oversight.
