Enrollment Expectation: Fall 2017 (10 minutes)

Transcript (~9 min @ 1:15:37)

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▶ 1:15:27 Jessica Dugan: would expect that something that the athletic department and extracurricular as well as very aware of and they that they do look at in depth yeah from their lens thank you very much so no further discussion all those in favor of approving this report that motion carries unanimously next on the EP and P

▶ 1:15:53 Jessica Dugan: agenda is enrollment expectations fall of 2017 in our packet we do have a copy

▶ 1:16:04 Jessica Dugan: of the September 7th 2017 enrollment that we can refer to our conversation

▶ 1:16:16 Speaker 3: with the super so this is the September 7th I'll tell you I had the registrar run the numbers again for me today um we're up one um to uh to what's the number to uh 105 at the

▶ 1:16:45 Speaker 3: high school um so again um we're up approximately 160 161 kids from last year so this is not your

▶ 1:16:51 Speaker 3: october one census which will give you a breakdown of all your demographics and everything else one

▶ 1:17:01 Speaker 3: of the more recent events that's happening is the older kid the older elementary kids moving in you know that the point of registration is the point at which we try to control class size it's our only opportunity to control class size so one of the things we're struggling with is if you

▶ 1:17:29 Speaker 3: say you look at the fifth grade at the Hoover I have 24 and 23 at the Horace Mann I have 23 and 25 at the Lincoln I have 19 22 and 19 at the Roosevelt I have 23 22 23 and at the Winthrop I have 19 20 and 20 so even when families are moving in above K we are trying to control class size it's not well understood i discussed it today actually with citywide pto to try to engage them in the conversation um it's not but i think it's important for the committee and the community to understand it's not just about that k entry point it's about the entry whenever a child enters us from k through um five that is our only chance to try to even the numbers and i have a very hard time pushing a class to 26 when I have other opportunities to place a child in a class of 19 I'm thinking about the child's experience as well as the

▶ 1:18:34 Speaker 3: teachers obligations so that is a pattern we're beginning to experience as well the middle school we knew there would be a dip that is the end of that trough where you only had a 12 strand if you remember for several years you only had a 12 strand then you went to a 13 strand and then to a 15 strand so what you have in the middle school right now is the end of that trough in seventh grade in seventh grade the high school you always have some variability but you can see that junior in that sophomore and senior and junior year is an uptick and that is where we are seeing the return from private parochial and charter as you know we received 25 students back to the middle in the high school this year and so you're seeing that uptick there so that is what it

▶ 1:19:31 Speaker 3: looks like as of today every day continues to change we are finding some of our DNRs again DNRs that did not report and we'll weed them out as we find them and the numbers will settle down by October 1 and we'll have an October 1 count for you the end of October we're given the month to finalize the figures and at that point Judy Chi and the data specialist will also do the analysis of all the demographics and at this point you said

▶ 1:20:02 Speaker 4: we are up how much from last year and we expect that will go down slightly in

▶ 1:20:06 Speaker 3: general uh i think it'll go down a little bit but not much um it's been interesting

▶ 1:20:18 Christine Casatelli: uh discussion conversation miss casatelli thank you superintendent would you mind having uh someone on your staff um put the actual enrollments against what our projected was so we can see if we're on track or i actually did that you actually did that aren't you something

▶ 1:20:41 Speaker 7: i can also just tell you that what did you say it must have been nap time

▶ 1:20:49 Speaker 7: for her for the baby so the the projections for the total number of students put us in the year year 2021. they thought that in 2017 we would be at 3769 and we are at 3938 which is the year the

▶ 1:21:10 Speaker 7: number they expected we would be at in terms of total enrollment in 2021. sorry I think 2020 was

▶ 1:21:19 Speaker 7: the year when we anticipated the greatest number of classrooms needed so we've already passed that

▶ 1:21:23 Jessica Dugan: according to where we are i'm sorry i was wondering if those projections included ecc or

▶ 1:21:33 Speaker 7: did not they do pre-k through 12. great thank you um and so i went grade by grade to see what number they projected versus what number we have most of them are actually just a couple under single digits difference except with the exception of first grade because last year we had a significantly larger increase than we expected so they thought we would have 283 first graders we have 332 wow so big difference there uh 10th grade they said we'd have 240 students we have 266. so that's a pretty big difference so that accounts for about 75 yes thank you and then grade 9 grade 11 and grade 8 were all over beyond single digits not as substantial as first grade and 10th grade so if you could circulate that it

▶ 1:22:29 Speaker 3: would be great thank you so I'm gonna squeal on my secretary for a moment was at the symphony on Saturday and the Victorian fear on Sunday and she said if

▶ 1:22:45 Speaker 3: were at either event you had an understanding of the issue it was staring you in the face

▶ 1:22:58 Speaker 4: so people are coming for the fireworks

▶ 1:23:04 Christine Casatelli: one last thing yes do you think we need to revisit our projections not at this time i

▶ 1:23:13 Speaker 3: really don't at this time I think it's too early I think we just have to wait another year at least and see where it goes okay thank you further discussion

▶ 1:23:27 Jessica Dugan: conversation with our new space our new modular space we have room prefabricated

▶ 1:23:35 Jessica Dugan: with our new classrooms we have space in our buildings now we are not now capped out this year and don't know what to do next year we have room to grow within

▶ 1:23:48 Speaker 3: the next couple of years is that at least within one year we we had swing space in every building mr. McAllister grant I realized I wasn't looking at the

▶ 1:23:56 Speaker 7: bottom of the sheet the other area where it was beyond double digits is at the ECC they increase it they anticipated 294 we have 318 the ECC we do have some

▶ 1:24:17 Jessica Dugan: non Melroseans so all this to say we will look at the actuals at the end of October or when that report comes out to the committee and look at budget implications as we move forward that concludes EP&P thank you very much