NEWS ARCHIVE

(Clinton) -- School Board elects new president & receives a 'discouraging' enrollment report. And, KROS NEWS includes enrollment report from area schools.

The Clinton School Board elected Greg Obren as the president for the coming year as part of the annual reorganizational meeting.

Obren and current board president Jim McGraw were nominated and Obren was selected on a 4 to 2 vote cast by ballots.

The board then selected Missy Sullivan-Pope as Vice-President of the board.

The Clinton School heard an enrollment report showing a continued decline in enrollment. Business Manager Jan Culbertson went through the various explanations of categories of students. In that report, she said, it is the ‘resident students’ that are counted for state aid figures while open enrollment in students generate funding that comes from their home district and students who open enroll out of the Clinton District mean funds go from Clinton to hose other districts. Culbertson’s chart shows 3,635 Clinton resident students this school year on the official count day-a drop of 79 from last year.

The count also shows 328 students open enroll-out to other districts. That’s an increase of 28 from last year. The Clinton district pays to those other districts just over one-point-nine million dollars through the state aid and that’s an increase of 200-thousand dollars. The number of students open-enrolling in to the Clinton district is 36 and that’s drop of six from last year. That also means drop in payments from those other districts.

Culbertson said it is 'discouraging' but that Clinton is among many schools with declining enrollment numbers.

Culbertson calculated the drop of 79 students mean nearly 480-thousand dollars in state aid.

Superintendent Deb Olson said they are considering some steps to cut expenses because of the declining revenue due to declining enrollment.

With the official count day on October first-neighboring districts are also finalizing their numbers.

Camanche School Superintendent Tom Parker says it appears the district is down about 21 for the students served with 1,107 students. He says the resident students down 23 to 892 while the open enrolled in students are up slightly to 215. Parker says of the students attending Camanche from districts include 182 from Clinton, 24 from DeWitt and 7 from Northeast.

At the Northeast School the enrollment increased. Superintendent Jim Cox says the number of resident students appears to up by about 25 and that does no include the sharing agreement with East Central or open enrolled students. Cox says Northeast has more open enrolled students coming in to the district than open enrolling out to other districts.

About 860 students are being served at the Northeast School With the formation of the new Easton Valley School with East Central and Preston the sharing agreement with East Central will end, but Cox noted they area already receiving some open enrollment requests from the neighboring district for next school year.

Written 10/9/2012 by Dave Vickers - KROS News

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