Enrollment has dipped slightly for USD 253 as was indicated through the annual enrollment and demographic report during the USD 253 Board of Education’s final meeting of 2019 Wednesday.
According to the data, presented by District Associate Executive Director of Assessment and Accountability Dr. Ryan Karjala, enrollment was down 0.7 percent from the 2018-19 academic year with 4,116 students currently enrolled. Assistant Superintendent of Business Operations Rob Scheib says the decline in enrollment does impact the district’s budget as the budget is based on prior or second-year prior enrollment.
Scheib says this may mean a decrease in next year’s budget, however, he says at is a minor dip in enrollment the decrease should not be significant. He adds enrollment numbers are likely to flatten out for the district in the coming years.
While enrollment saw a minor decrease, the number of district at-risk students receiving free or reduced lunches did not. In fact, the percentage increased by 3.5 percent to 62.7 for this year.
Of that, 47 percent of at-risk students qualify for the district’s free lunch program. Scheib explains the free lunch program is very beneficial to the district as it is used by the government to determine the amount of both state and federal funding each district receives to provide programs to assist those at-risk students.
However, Scheib says there is one major issue that faces the state of Kansas in this regard.
There are two forms of funding available to the district at both the state and federal levels. This includes Title I assistance from the Federal Government and at-risk funding from the state.
In other business, the school board approved a request to let bids for converting all secondary access doors from keyed access to key card access and approved policy updates for the district.
The board will reconvene for its first meeting of 2020 on Jan. 8 at 7 pm inside the Mary Herbert Education Center.
