Enrollment flat in school district

There are 1,153 students enrolled in Sisters schools as of late October, exactly the same number as were in classes a year ago.

There are, however, more students in middle school and high school and fewer in elementary school.

The elementary school is down 25 students, with 419 children enrolled. Sisters Middle School has 289 students, up from 270 last year. Sisters High School gained six students for a total of 445.

Enrollment is a critical factor for schools because state education funding is apportioned on a weighted, per-student basis known as Average Daily Membership (ADM).

Kindergarten continues a trend of enrolling fewer children -- just 50 this year, down from 65 last year and 58 in 1998. Principal Tim Comfort noted that kindergarten classes in Sisters usually enrolled around 70 students in the early 1990s.

There is one full-day kindergarten class, which parents support with tuition payments. There are two traditional half-day classes.

"Without our full-day program we'd have been in a real jam," Comfort reported.

Without the tuition program, the school would have had to drop to two kindergarten classes with 25 students each. According to Comfort 25 is way too many kids for a kindergarten class. In the current program, average class size is 17, an optimal number, Comfort said.

Class sizes in first and second grade are low as well, at 22, thanks to a $27,000 federal grant designated for class-size reduction in those grades.

"We've been able to use that to keep our staffing even though we have a smaller school," Comfort said.

However, the principal said, class sizes in grades three through five have crept up to around 30. Class sizes, said Comfort, influenced at least one local family to choose private school.

"Folks are truly tempted to look at the private school option in our local community," Comfort said.

The relatively small increase in enrollment still has had an effect on class sizes at Sisters High School, according to Principal Boyd Keyser.

With most of the new students in the freshman and sophomore classes, Math 1 and Math 2 sections have ballooned to 36 or 37 students, Keyser said.

Keyser said the realistic capacity of Sisters High School is 450 to 500 students, a capacity that may be reached in the next few years.

Superintendent Steve Swisher projects a continued growth rate of 3 to 5 percent per year in the middle school and high school. He expects zero growth at the elementary school, though that may change if higher density allows for more affordable housing.

Swisher notes that families moving into the Sisters School District tend to have older children.

The only real enrollment spike is at Sisters Middle School, which has 19 more students this year than last and 24 more than in 1998.

Middle school principal Lora Nordquist said that the impact on class size has not been significant, but that the growing numbers are hard to accommodate in the current facility.

"We're still two classrooms short, a lunch room short, a gym short..." she said.

Nordquist noted that the middle school runs on a split lunch shift and many students eat in the gym, which makes it unavailable for physical education classes.

Nordquist said about 30 students have moved into Sisters Middle School from out of the school district.

Author Bio

Jim Cornelius, Editor in Chief

Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.

• Email: editor@nuggetnews.com
• Phone: 5415499941