It’s worth doing a deeper dive into enrollment numbers, as it’s something this board likes to frequently tout. We’ll set aside for now whether the quality of a school district should be judged by enrollment…and just evaluate this statistic.
The Claim
- BOE has increased enrollment by ~15% for the ’22-23 school year
The Vedict: misleading
- District enrollment did indeed increase 15.8% in ’22-23 compared to ’21-22.
- Digging Deeper:
- In the ’21-22 school year, Merit kids were not counted as being in Woodland Park RE-2, they were legally part of ERBOCES (their status was Contract School).
- Merit kids were going to school in town in ’21-22, but not counting towards district numbers. Hence, the big jump when they were then reclassified as WPSD as a charter school.
- When Merit opened for the ’21-22 school year, WPSD enrollment decreased by 11% as those kids shifted from WPSD to ERBOCES.
- If we count Merit students as always being part of WPSD, the numbers are:
- ’21-22 school year: 3.1% increase in enrollment (the first year Merit opened)
- ’22-23 school year: 0.14% increase in enrollment
- Given the chaotic COVID time and nationwide shift in population to more rural areas during that time, it’s impossible to say if that 3.1% increase was due to Merit or just nationwide trends.
- The claim that district enrollment increased 15% this past school year is misleading, it uses a shell game to inflate numbers.
- DATA: enrollment numbers, from the CDE (direct link to XLS)
- 2018-2019: 2380
- 2019-2020: 2284
- 2020-2021: 2055
- 2021-2022: 1832 (Merit’s first year)
- 2021-2022: 2119 – if you include the 287 Merit students
- 2022-2023: 2122
- Student enrollment has been on the decline in Woodland Park prior to COVID, though demographics have also been changing.