District administrator's corner

by Loren Glasbrenner,  River Valley School District Administrator Recently, the River Valley School District engaged in a population study of our community and how it may affect our district enrollment.  Quite frankly, annual decisions cannot be based on only the exact numbers in the classroom, but must consider projections that help us plan for future years. We once again partnered with the University of Wisconsin - Madison Applied Population Laboratory (APL).  The APL works with applied demographic research and outreach, translating social and economic data, which in return produces useful information for Wisconsin citizens, policymakers, government agencies, and community-based organizations, and others. (The organization can be found at https://apl.wisc.edu.)  The findings provide our teams at the school district a “best guess” of what is to come. Our districtwide enrollment for the current 2021-22 school year is 1,122 students.  The report takes into consideration past enrollment, current and projected births, and overall trends in population and housing to determine future student enrollment.  And some of the data may surprise you: • Overall, trends in births and kindergarten have been declining; however recent kindergarten trends show less decline.  Single-family home construction has averaged 18 new homes annually during the last five years. • Multiple projection models show a 4K-12 enrollment decrease, averaging almost a 10 percent decline in the next five years.  A baseline model projects the greatest decline in enrollment, while the Kindergarten Trend model projects the least amount of decrease.  • The Early Learning Center enrollment is likely to decrease the most in the near term, declining by 21 percent.  Elementary school enrollment is likely to see enrollment decrease by 11 percent in the near term. • Middle school enrollment will decline the least over the next five years, decreasing by 6 percent.  High school will experience a steady, more leveled enrollment the next three years followed by slightly decreasing enrollment with a decline of 8 percent in five years.  District-level projections should be viewed as having high reliability over the next five years, but the projections over time may fluctuate.  The likelihood of reliability is high, as our district also completed a population study with APL in 2015 (and the data projections were incredibly close to our reality).  The past study projected that our enrollment this year would be 1,101, and our enrollment today is 1,122.   I don’t share all of this data and study with you fearfully, but I do want residents of our community to hear and study our reality.  I encourage curious folks to go to our website and read the population study (https://www.rvschools.org/district/districtprofile.cfm).  We are not alone; the trends of other rural districts are very similar and, in general, Wisconsin has fewer children than it did 10 years ago (https://www.census.gov).  All the more reason to plan carefully and react based on clear data.  River Valley will continue to be strong and be a school of choice in Southwestern Wisconsin.  We will plan carefully and move ahead with Blackhawk pride.