Enrollment drops by 97 students in PW-S

The Port Washington-Saukville School District’s enrollment has plummeted by 97 students this year, and administrators have no idea why.

“I’m really at a loss,” Director of Business Services Mel Nettesheim said.

The School Board on Monday approved a third Friday count that shows the district’s enrollment dropped from 2,620 students in the 2021-22 school year to 2,523, this school year.

The third Friday in September count is important because it is used to help determine tax levy authority and state aid for school districts.

Fewer students generally means less state aid, although districts with declining enrollment are protected from severe fluctuations in aid by a declining enrollment exemption.

“This (decreasing enrollment) will still impact our budget,” Nettesheim told the board.

Such a significant decrease in enrollment is unexpected and unexplained, and Nettesheim said the district will conduct surveys to get better understanding of enrollment trends.

“We will have to reach out to families who are moving out of the district or who are still living here but not sending their kids to the district,” she said.

Open enrollment, which allows parents to send their children to the school district of their choice, does not explain the enrollment decrease, Nettesheim said. The net total of district students attending schools elsewhere increased by three students this year, she said.

“I call that a wash,” Nettesheim said. “We’re just not seeing a huge increase in open enrollment out or in.”

While open enrollment doesn’t explain the exodus of students, the district needs to understand why students are opting to attend schools outside the district and work to attract more students from other districts, she said.

“We’re in an area of very good school districts, Port-Saukville included,” she said. “It’s good that students have a lot of options, but we need to tap into why students are open enrolling out of our district.”

Two schools in particular — Dunwiddie Elementary School and Thomas Jefferson Middle School — experienced significant decreases in enrollment.

When Dunwiddie’s enrollment is adjusted for the new way in which 4-year-old kindergarten students are counted, it is educating 24 fewer students this year, and Nettesheim said a reduction in affordable housing near that school may explain the decrease.

“Last year I had calls from three families in that area who said their affordable housing is now non-affordable housing and that they would have to move,” she said.

At the middle school, enrollment has declined by 23 students.

“We’re going to have to dive into this to figure it out, but we had a large eighth-grade class leave the middle school last year and it hasn’t been replaced by a large fifth-grade class coming into the middle school this year,” Nettesheim said.

On the positive side, enrollment in the district’s 4-K program has increased by 10 students this year, which is the first year those classes are being taught in district schools. Previously they were taught at private facilities in Port and Saukville that partnered with the district.

“That’s a huge plus,” Nettesheim said. “It means we’re bringing people into the district.”

While enrollment is decreasing in the Port-Saukville School District, it’s doing quite the opposite in the district’s neighbor to the south.

Enrollment in the Grafton School District increased by 64 students this year, and that’s on top of a 48-student increase last school year, Director of Business Services Topher Adams said.

“With the way we have building going on in our district, I wasn’t surprised enrollment increased, but I wasn’t expecting such a large increase this year on top of last year’s increase,” he said.

At the same time, Grafton is attracting more students through open enrollment.

Last school year, 61 more students opted into the district than opted out. That number increased to 82 this year, Adams said.