Enrollments declined in public schools across Indiana, due to the pandemic. And when enrollments decline, schools suffer financial losses.
Blogger Steve Hinnefeld estimates that public schools across the state will lose at least $100 million due to enrollment declines.
This is a story that is happening in districts across the nation. DeVos must be thrilled.
He writes:
Indiana school districts stand to lose over $100 million in state funding this year because of reduced enrollment attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fall 2020 enrollment in traditional public schools declined by 17,300 students, according to data released last week by the Indiana Department of Education. Each of those students translates to over $6,200 in lost funding from the state.
It’s not yet clear what happened or where the students went. Some families may have opted to homeschool their children rather than send them to school during the pandemic. Some may have switched to private or charter schools.
A significant factor could be families with young children choosing to delay or skip kindergarten. Indiana does not require kindergarten attendance, and children are not required to start school until the academic year when they turn 7.
Over 80% of school districts lost enrollment, according to state data. They include some rural and urban districts that have been shedding students for years, but also suburban districts that have been growing. Hamilton Southeastern schools lost over 400 students; Carmel Clay schools lost over 200.
Indianapolis Public Schools lost the most students: nearly 2,000 according to the state data or approximately 1,200 according to the district’s own figures. (The discrepancy appears to reflect the state omitting from the district’s enrollment two KIPP charter schools that are part of the IPS innovation network; IPS includes the schools in its count).
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Are we supposed to send children to school to risk getting sick so the BOE can collect the dough?? How crass and stark for money grubbing can you get!!??
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I agree. ☹️
If Indiana Board of Education, et al, are so concerned about the vanished students, why don’t they call, email and visit the vanished students’ parents?
🤔😮
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Indiana cannot be the only state that finds itself in this predicament. Hopefully, the new federal administration will help compensate public schools for lost enrollment in such an atypical year for enrollment projections. When a vaccine is in place, we will see enrollments increase in all schools, and we should take this into account when planning. Public schools like businesses will need to plan for recovery.
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Yes, but “we” really don’t know if a vaccine will occur and even with a vaccine, would the students return?
🤔😐🔔
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NYC’s lost about 35,000 at last count.
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I really don’t know much about NYC. ☹️
If class sizes are big, I can picture parents pulling their kids out, similarly to TB and polio in the 1950s?. 😐
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There’s like 10-12 kids per classroom, max. Everybody else online full-time. My son’s class has under 10.
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FLERP, thank you, I had no idea. 😐
I’m glad the class sizes are small. 🙂
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Indiana is not the only state where education budgets have collapsed. Our Show Me State rural poverty district is really hurting. Hurting so bad they are attempting to gut the FFA (for you city folk-LOL that is Future Farmers of America) program. It has been a wonderful program over the years enabling students to get the knowledge base for that very important work of providing food for all. How many of you know how to “grade a beef carcass”, or even what that means? The kids in FFA do and learn by actually grading a couple of carcasses which local farmers bring in for the day. FFA is an integral part of the food supply chain learning environment-and there is a lot to learn about that area.
To top it off, they are selling the building (which if I remember was gifted to the district for a nominal fee) where the “Alpha Academy”, the school for those who struggle in the traditional school environment is and moving it to where, you guessed it, the FFA program was.
It’s going to be a free for all at next weeks special board meeting, now moved to the high school commons (ya know where the cafeteria and theatre/stage share a space) to accommodate a large crowd. My questions, which I know have not been thought of yet, so I’m planting a seed, ya know like the FFA kids do in class in growing vegetable and flower plants to sell in the spring, are: “Have you given any thoughts as to how to reconstitute the FFA program after gutting it, and the financial situation has improved? What plans do you have to restore FFA? We shall see. I sense the vote will be put off, until the board can do the cut quietly. I hope I’m wrong.
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It’s bad and sad to eliminate the FFA program. ☹️
Chicago Public Schools has done the same, with vocational and business programs, in favor of college preparatory. ☹️
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Yep, everyone needs a college degree. I just read today an interesting article in the Atlantic about Turgin, a scientist converted into a historian using numbers and data to supposedly prove that one can predict when a society will collapse. Now I think his methodology is bunk, but he states that when the elite (think college educated in our society) outnumber the ability for society to provide meaningful work for them is when society collapses as the elite square off fighting each other for the backing of the various lower SES groups.
Turgin contends that we are at that point today in America and that the next ten years are going to be, well let’s say “interesting”.
Sad to hear that the CPS has fallen prey to the college for everyone nonsense which it appears is the same thinking of my rural poverty district which is trying to keep up with the schools of the counties east of us, the suburbs of St. Louis. Either that or they are only worried about trying to raise test scores. I think it’s a little of both.
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The best kids in our school are the FFA kids. Our district, like so many other rural districts, has always felt the pinch.
One of the things that has driven the rural parts of the country into the hands of the Republican Party is the practice of requiring school districts to have one program or another, but not funding it. Republicans have been successful in convincing rural voters that these unfunded mandates are a democratic thing.
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Indiana has a major problem.
………………………………………….
NWI Times] Indiana again reports record-breaking number of COVID cases; Region sees four more deaths
Four more people were reported dead from COVID-19 Saturday in the Region while Indiana saw over 8,451 new cases, marking the fourth day in a row the state had more than 5,000 cases reported in a 24-hour period…
State health officials listed 250 deaths as probable. For probable deaths, there was no positive test on record, but a physician listed COVID-19 as a contributing cause, based on X-rays, scans and other clinical symptoms…
Indiana saw a record number of new positive cases over a single day at 8,451. The state’s previous record was 6,581…
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/indiana-again-reports-record-breaking-number-of-covid-cases-region-sees-four-more-deaths/article_03a789c8-65dc-5842-9ec7-f61cb6b33f57.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=user-share
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This is interesting:
“Some school districts started the academic year online, and that may have pushed some families to turn to charter or private schools that were offering face-to-face instruction. But it appears a bigger factor was families choosing online programs to avoid in-person instruction during the pandemic.”
If I understand this correctly, there were a significant number of districts offering no online instruction option—ignoring the fact that there would be students (or their family members) with health impairments requiring them to stay away from in-person instruction. WTH?
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