9 districts facing 350-student ledge

With their existence at risk, schools keep wary eye on enrollment tallies

Hartford School District's initial enrollment count confirms what Superintendent Teresa Ragsdale anticipated for the 2014-15 school year.

The Sebastian County district started this school year with 335 students, she said. That head count means the district is starting a second school year below the 350-student minimum that the state requires for a school district to continue to operate.

Last year, the state had 11 school districts with enrollments of fewer than 400 students. Two of those districts -- Stephens and Norphlet -- have merged with other school districts, and the Hartford district is taking steps to join with the Hackett School District.

Small, rural school districts watch enrollment figures closely. Under Act 60, falling below 350 students for two years in a row means that a school district must find a partner willing to merge with it voluntarily, or the state Board of Education can force it to annex or consolidate with one or more districts.

When evaluating school districts on the basis of student numbers, the Arkansas Department of Education doesn't look solely at the official Oct. 1 enrollment figures. Instead, it calculates an average daily attendance using a formula that's based on how many students were enrolled each day for three-quarters of the school year, said Eric Saunders, the department's assistant commissioner for fiscal and administrative services.

The analysis for the 2013-14 school year found three districts that had average daily counts of fewer than 350 students: Hartford at 326 students; Hughes, which straddles the Crittenden and St. Francis county line, at 345 students; and Kirby in Pike County at 343 students, Saunders said.

While Hartford and Kirby were at or above 350 students in the 2012-13 school year, the department determined that year that Hughes had two consecutive school years with fewer than 350 students in average daily attendance, meaning that the district is subject to administrative consolidation or annexation.

The Hughes district's official Oct. 1 enrollment was 348 in 2012-13 and 354 in 2013-14, but its average daily attendance was 348 in 2012-13 and 344 in 2013-14.

Hughes Superintendent Sheryl Owens said she did not yet have a reliable head count of students for this school year because students continue to enter and withdraw.

Owens has started preliminary discussions with neighboring districts about merging, and she said district officials are still making decisions and developing plans, she said. The district has conducted community meetings on the issue.

"If that's the law, that's the law," Owens said. "No one wants to lose their school. If that's what the law says, we have to follow suit."

For several years, Hartford has struggled to keep up its enrollment. In the 2010-11 school year, enrollment dipped to 343 students. To avoid being forced to merge with another district, school officials spent $130,000 on incentives, such as free preschool and free student meals, to boost enrollment. Enrollment climbed to 399 students, but the spending sapped the district's funds, leading the state to find it in fiscal distress.

That meant the district had to start charging for some of the incentives, like $50 per week for preschool, to improve its finances, Ragsdale has said.

Before the start of the 2013-14 school year, Ragsdale said, she knew that some families had moved and she expected that the district's enrollment would drop again. District officials have spent the past year talking with a nearby district about merging.

Hackett School District in Sebastian County was open to annexing the Hartford district, and the district's Superintendent Bill Pittman has said he hopes to keep the Hartford campus open.

The Hartford and Hackett school boards have separate meetings scheduled for Monday. On the agendas are votes on whether to sign a petition and resolution to submit to the Board of Education, Ragsdale said. Any annexation is subject to state board approval.

Last school year, Kirby Superintendent Jeff Alexander started discussions on joining with a neighboring district after enrollment in his district fell below 350 students, but he no longer plans to pursue it.

Preliminary enrollment figures for this school year show the district with 378 students, he said.

"Bam," Alexander said. "I was shooting for 360. I had no idea we would hit 378."

Alexander attributes the rise to community members encouraging friends and relatives to send their children to school in Kirby. The enrollment increase required school officials to hire a few more teachers to meet state standards on elementary school class sizes.

Among other small schools, enrollment is up 44 students from last year in the Hillcrest School District, which includes students from Lawrence, Sharp and Independence counties, officials said. High school Principal Greg Crabtree said changing the seventh- through 12th-grade high school to a different model of schooling helped boost enrollment. The high school is part of the New Tech Network of schools that emphasize learning through projects.

The district also provides all students with iPads or MacBook Air laptops, he said.

"Our numbers were dropping," Crabtree said. "We decided we were going to do something, or we were going to be one of the Act 60 schools."

This year, some students transferred into the Hillcrest School District after the June 30 closing of the nearby Black Rock School in the Lawrence County School District, he said.

The Nevada School District's enrollment is up 48 students from last year. About that many students transferred this year into the Nevada district in Nevada County after the closing of the Stephens School District.

For the Strong-Huttig district, in Lee and Union counties, enrollment has dropped by 35 students this school year, Superintendent Saul Lusk said. The district has struggled and was designated as being in academic distress for low performance on standardized state tests, Lusk said.

Parents had the option of sending their children to higher-performing schools, he said.

The district has made changes, including having teachers routinely plan together in professional learning communities and providing job-embedded training, Lusk said.

The state board has commended the district for its progress.

Community organizations in Strong and Huttig raised money for students who received proficient or advanced scores to take trips to amusement parks, Lusk said.

Still, the district's enrollment is far below the 690 students it had in 2004-05, and now hovers just above 350, he said.

"It's a concern for all of us, especially for the parents who have made a decision to send their children here," Lusk said. "It is a big concern."

NW News on 09/07/2014

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