← School Committee · 2026-08-18 · School Committee Meeting
Report: Enrollment Updates
Agenda original PDF
Minutes original PDF
. With five candidates advancing to join the current team of nine, the district expects to expand its staffing this year. 3. Report: Enrollment Updates Superintendent Berman presented the current enrollment report along with a five-year historical comparison chart. Discussion included whether figures reflected start or end-of- year data, noting steady overall enrollment trends relative to prior years, and the Superintendent acknowledged expected summer fluctuations due to family moves and transfers to private or vocational schools. 4. CONSENT AGENDA MOTION: To approve Meeting Minutes of July 28, 2026 RESULT: ACCEPTED MOVER: Melissa Holleran SECONDER: Jennifer Razi-Thomas AYES: Jennifer Razi-Thomas, Margaret Raymond Driscoll, Melissa Holleran, Sheri Leo ABSENT: Jennifer Grigoraitis, Matt Hartman, Seamus Kelley 1. Warrants FY27 Refunds - S27008 - $20,642.12 FY27 School - S27009 - $395,255.36 FY27 August Debit Card - S27010 - $1,430.00 FY27 July High School Student Activity Wire - S27011 - $1,812.39 FY27 July MVMMS Student Activity Wire - S27012 - $8,338.14 2. Regular Meeting Minutes: July 28, 2
Transcript
▶ 12:24 Speaker 3: Excellent. Any other questions? Seeing none, back to you, Dr. Berman.
▶ 12:28 Speaker 4: Sure. Moving right on to the enrollment update. So again, you have the updated enrollment report in your packet. In addition to the enrollment report, we did add a chart to that. That is the comparison of the last five years. So this will allow you to see where we are in comparison at the elementary level, middle school, and the high school to our past five years. And then we will continue to update that every month, so that bottom line will change monthly so that you can see where we are. I feel like that will be helpful.
▶ 13:03 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: Great. And I agree, that would be extremely helpful, and I really appreciate your adding that to the detail that's in the sheet above. Any other questions or any questions on that? Ms. Holleran?
▶ 13:15 Speaker 8: Yes, thank you. I love this new chart. Just to be clear, the total enrollment and the other enrollments from the past years, that was our ending enrollment at the end of the year or the starting enrollment?
▶ 13:28 Speaker 4: So I believe that's our enrollment based on our Sims report. Okay. And so that's- Perfect ... where those are captured. So again, anytime we do enrollment, right? It's a screenshot in time. Yeah. So that bottom number will fluctuate, but those other ones are based on the Sims
▶ 13:44 Speaker 8: report, yeah. Okay, perfect. Thank you. You're welcome.
▶ 13:46 Speaker 3: Ms. Leigh.
▶ 13:46 Speaker 2: In the interest of continuing with the historical data, because that context is super helpful, can you just give a brief overview, I know you did this a couple of months ago, about what we tend to see between now and, I don't know, October in terms of inflow, outflow? Not that you can predict the future. Sure. But I think that's helpful for us to understand.
▶ 14:06 Speaker 4: Sure. I would say that at this moment in time, we still have students who are registered in Melrose Public Schools who we believe are going to some private schools, vocational schools, whatever else that may be. But summertime, as we talked before when we talked about the personnel report similarly to the enrollment report, this is a time when people move. We know that. During that summer break, people make different life choices. People may move out of state or to a different part of the state. So, this is the time we see that change. As you can see, we have been fairly steady-ish over the last couple of years. So, we had tons of registrations just today, but we also had some withdrawals. So again, it's just that constant piece. And our registrar, Tara Durrant, is doing a really great job, but it's very busy right now with just staying up on that and being able to place, especially at the elementary level, where we have spots and different things like that.
▶ 15:15 Speaker 9: Thank you. Mm-hmm.