With the school year in full swing, the Cottonwood- Oak Creek School District governing board had their first meeting since the start of classes on Tuesday, Sept. 3.
Among the discussion of the five schools [and auxiliary programs] of the school district’s first few weeks was a conversation about early enrollment numbers. Though the school district’s numbers so far are still tentative so early in the year, administrators so far have seen a mild drop in enrollment compared to last year.
According to COCSD Business Manager David Snyder, the school district had an average daily member- ship [ADM] of 1,955 on the hundredth day of school last year, which is usually considered a good benchmark of how many kids attend the district’s schools throughout the year. So far, enrollment for the 2019-2020 school year seems to have dropped by roughly 20 students, to 1,935.
“Generally overall we’re down about 20 kids from last year,” Snyder said. “We see it go up a little bit but not more than 10 or 20 students throughout the year.”
Since Mountain View Preparatory school has a wait-list for admitting students, its student body stayed almost exactly the same compared to last year. Dr. Daniel Bright actually saw its numbers increase, with the net decrease for the district coming from Oak Creek School and Cottonwood Community School.
Under Arizona’s education policies, school districts receive funding based on their ADM at various points throughout the year, increasing or decreasing throughout the year as enrollment does. According to Snyder, this funding mechanism [which is a recent change from flat funding based purely on the previous year’s ADM, which was used by the state until this year] leaves the school district with some ambiguity — having planned out the year’s budget assuming 1,950 students, the district has to deal with not only a lower amount of state funding, but possible variability over the year.
The drop in funding compared to expectations was a focus of the school board at Tuesday’s meeting, as Board President Eric Marcus questioned Snyder about the district’s options. Marcus and the board had previously discussed hopes for a 1% raise for COCSD teachers if ADM was as high as 1,970, and he asked Snyder if there was any way to move forward with that plan under this year’s circumstances.
“Could we make up that deficiency?” Marcus asked. “I’m just trying to see if there’s any way we could come up with this 1% increase.”
Snyder said that as far as he can see from where the district is now, that raise is probably not in the cards.
“We’ll have to see how it does over the next couple months,” Snyder said. “At this time, there’s no money in budget.”
