Enrollment numbers are continuing to drop in West Aurora School District 129, officials said.
West Aurora School District Assistant Superintendent of Operations Angie Smith presented an analysis of student enrollment numbers in a report to the school board Monday night.
“Enrollment drives a lot of our decision-making. It drives our revenue ultimately and our staffing,” Smith said.
Decreasing enrollment could ultimately mean reduced state support, officials have said, since that support is based on the number of students a district has enrolled.
In the past district officials have mentioned families having fewer children and an increasing number of people leaving the state of Illinois as factors in the declining numbers.
The data presented to the board on Monday focused on enrollment in kindergarten through 12th grade from 2013 through 2023 in the district. As the data has shown in recent years, enrollment has been going down.
“Enrollment has been on a decline since our high point in 2013 and 2014,” Smith told board members.
The overall enrollment in the district in the 2013-14 school year was 12,436 students, while the enrollment figures 10 days into this school year show 10,456 students, a decline of around 16%, she said.
Elementary school enrollment at this point is down 1,259 students – or 22% – from a high point of 5,686 students in the 2013-14 school year. Middle school enrollment is down 534 students – or 18% – from a high point in the 2018-19 school year.
“The interesting one to me is in grades nine to 12 that had a high point in 2019-20 at 3,900 students. At day 10 (this school year) we sit at 3,675 students,” Smith said.
That represents a drop of 225 high school students – or 6% – from a high point in 2019-20, she said.
“The swing there has only been 6%,” she said, which is smaller than the decline seen at the elementary and middle school levels.
One reason for that, she said, is that “on a net basis we do tend to see more kids who perhaps attended parochial schools in grades K-8 and come back to the high school.”
Some of the other factors involved may be the cost of tuition for private high schools and District 129’s comprehensive program at the high school level, she said.
Overall in the district, “we’re down almost 2,000 students from our high point in 2013-14,” Smith said.
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“Almost every elementary school reached (an enrollment) high point in the 2012-13 range,” Smith said.
She said that “kindergarten is the big driver” concerning the consistent downward trend in enrollment.
Kindergarten enrollment was at a high point with 965 students in 2013-14, she said. This year, the district has 710 kindergarteners.
“Kindergarten continues to be the hardest to predict, especially by building levels,” she said of enrollment.
Freeman Elementary had 115 kindergartners last year, while there are only 69 this year, Smith said.
“It makes it very difficult for us to pinpoint where students will be,” Smith said.
Late registrations for kindergarten do make staffing difficult, she said. However, the district continues to explore additional avenues to identify students and register them earlier, according to Smith.
“We continue to try to figure out how we can get families to register for kindergarten. We even saw families register their older kids and didn’t register their kindergartners,” Smith said.
Enrollment trends and demographics are monitored year-to-year in the district.
“The reason we keep an eye on this is that at some point in time a continued drop in enrollment could ultimately negatively impact funding,” Smith said.
Linda Girardi is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.