School enrollment decline leveling out

Enrollment in Sisters schools is not yet back on an even keel, but the steep decline of recent years is leveling out. Superintendent Jim Golden reported to board members Wednesday night that current enrollment

"rollup" was 1,104 students against last years "rollup" of 1,079.

"This is not year-over-year growth but, in other words we went from a diving Kamikaze plane in terms of loss of enrollment to now. We have almost pulled up. If we had another 42 kids we would be even or growing."

Rollup refers to the size of the high school graduating class leaving the district, offset by the estimate of incoming of kindergarten enrollment. For a number of years now there has been a yearly decline in student enrollment. This has caused a drop in state revenue that has been exacerbated by the recent recession. This resulted in an ongoing budget crisis for the district.

Two factors are consistently cited when discussing the causes for the decline in enrollment.

The recession caused a complete collapse of the once-booming house-building industry in Central Oregon. This forced builders and construction workers to move from Sisters Country and from Central Oregon to find work. Many of these were younger families with school-age children.

Current estimates put Sisters at 50 percent retirees with no school-age children.

The second related contributor is the lack of family-wage jobs in Sisters combined with the lack of affordable housing for purchase or rental.

The board will continue to monitor enrollment trends closely as the enrollment numbers settle down and firm up.

Board member Stephen King requested the historical enrollment data to allow him to plot the data in hopes of being able to better predict where enrollment was headed.

In other school district news, Golden reported that 15 people showed up for the bond measure grounds tour on Tuesday, September 30. There is a final tour planned for Saturday October 11, at 10 a.m. for anyone interested.

Detailed spreadsheets of the bond project-by-project analysis are available for public download by contacting the district office. Ballots will be mailed on October 15 for the November 4 bond election.

Golden said, "The thing that was an 'aha' moment for me on the tour of the school grounds was that once they see Reed Stadium and see the track and the non-compliant ADA stands they say "Oh, I can see the problem."

Director of Operations Leland Bliss reported that The Little Cloverdale Preschool will have some new tenants. The Heart of Oregon Corps will utilize one of the classrooms, and Youth Build will use the other classroom. Both vocational programs will pay their own utilities, and the school district will be allowed to be placed at no cost in their programs.

The annual Oregon State Department of Education school district "report card" results will be released on Thursday, October 9. The ever-evolving format includes a detailed, school-by-school analysis of performance and performance growth in a wide variety of categories. Copies of the report card will be mailed to every parent with children attending public school in Sisters.