SVVSD Board of Education hears 2020 enrollment update

It almost seems that since COVID shook the nation in March, it has been an easy scapegoat for many shortcomings. Even if it's not the complete reason for some sort of decline, it does appear to be a contributing factor in many cases, and 2020 school enrollment is no different.

Last Wednesday, the St. Vrain Valley School District board of education started the meeting with the enrollment report. Scott Toillion, the district's planning director, emphasized that all districts across the state have experienced declines in enrollment. These declines are primarily seen in preschool and kindergarten classes, where parents are either opting to hold their children back a year, register for home schooling or, even leaving the district entirely.

Overall, the Niwot feeder schools lost 4.4% of enrollment, or 118 students. Interesting to note is that while each of the three elementary schools and the middle school lost students, Niwot High actually increased enrollment. Across the five schools, overall feeder enrollment is at 2,582 students; this means that the associated school buildings are only at about 71% capacity (2,582 students occupying space for up to 3,643 students).

Of those 2,582 students, 39.2% (1,012) of all students are on free or reduced lunch; 31.8% (820) students are classified as English Language Learners; and there are 13.1% (339) enrolled in special education funding. Additionally, of the total students, about 44% (1,137) of students identify as an ethnicity other than white (1,445).

District wide, there was a decrease of 1,106 students, or about 3.5%. As noted, a large part of this is due to losses in preschool and kindergarten enrollment, but also because there were no foreign exchange students this year. The only grades that saw growth were 9th and 11th; in total, there were 1,783 newly enrolled students (the lowest number since 2012). There was also a slight uptick in homeless students, from 184 students last year to 206. This is possibly attributed to COVID.

While enrollment is important, enrollment data is not a direct correlation to budgeting and funding data. For example, a full time student (1st-12th grade) is counted as a whole student while a part-time student or a half-day kindergartener is only counted as half of a student in terms of funding. At present, the per student funding is $7,814.80 for the district. The funded pupil count for SVVSD went down by 1,105.04 "students," which will result in a gross loss of $8,635,667. However, this amount is adjusted due to the Public School Finance Act, which has a provision to help alleviate funding reductions as a result of lower enrollment numbers. With this provision in place, the Funded Pupil Count is adjusted to be the highest of the average of 2, 3, 4 or 5 years. After finding the average of each of those time frames, SVVSD ended up using the numbers from the last 3 years, which will mean that the adjusted funding loss will instead be $4,599,010.

To view the enrollment report by Scott Toillion and financial report by district accountant Anthony Whiteney, go to the SVVSD Board of Education's vimeo site