By Adam Swift
At Monday night’s school committee meeting, Superintendent of Schools Lisa Howard gave a brief overview of current enrollment figures at the beginning of the school year and compared the figures to trends over the past decade.
“Enrollment in the month of September is not necessarily what it is going to be by Oct. 1 when we have to submit that data (to the state),” said Howard. “I can tell you, after eight-and-a-half years of doing this now, month-to-month enrollment is not the same.”
As of Monday, Howard said the district has 2,010 students either actively enrolled or in the process of being enrolled.
“When we get closer to finishing the report that we will do for Oct. 1, I will have a nice, detailed report for you so you can see what that enrollment looks like,” Howard said.
While beginning to prepare the Oct. 1 report to the state, which helps determine the amount of Chapter 70 state money the district will receive, Howard said she started looking at enrollment going back to the 2012-13 school year.
“At that point, we had 1,975 kids in the schools, and then I looked at the patterns, what was the pattern from that point in time to now, and what we have done in those timeframes that would affect enrollment, or what might be happening in the world that might affect enrollment at that time,” said Howard.
During the Covid era, the superintendent said there was a large drop in enrollment, with some students being homeschooled, some going on virtual school plans, and others going to private schools for a year or two.
“Those are some of the patterns we are seeing,” Howard said. “I need to dig a little deeper into the pattern of residency and when school choice started to drift away from us and we were no longer a school choice community. Then, what did we do from that point forward with residency?”
At one point, Howard said the district was just checking for Winthrop residency when students enrolled, but that there were some flaws in that practice.
“We started to tighten up residency and have some really more well laid out protocols to make sure we were equitably entering kids into school or equitably denying students’ entrance into school,” said Howard.
Over the years, Howard said the district changed its procedures to look at residency as students entered grades three, six, and nine.
“I think this has been our best year in terms of staying on top of kids registering for schools and making sure that we are following a very consistent process,” said Howard.
The district has tightened up the process of making sure the students who go to school in Winthrop are town residents, she said.
“That’s the purpose of being respectful of everyone’s tax dollars, and also somewhat out of desperation to make sure our staff size stays where we need it,” said Howard.
The district is also concerned about space with the potential for increasing enrollment, she added.
“Right now, we have 2,010 students, tomorrow it could be 2,015, and the next day it could be 2,001,” said Howard. “But I think monthly, keeping track of that will be helpful for the committee to know where we are at.”
Howard said the Oct. 1 data is especially important because it correlates to the district’s Chapter 70 funding.