Enrollment at Haines School hasn’t dropped this year nearly as much as was projected.
The district’s student count, which ended last year at 270, declined by only two students to 268 at the time of the state’s official count in October. In budgeting, the district had projected a drop to 244 students.
At $5,830 per student in state funding for the district, the 24-student increase from projections amounts to an estimated increase in state funding of around $125,000.
School board president Anne Marie Palmieri said the district hasn’t received final word on its state funding amount, but the small drop is “definitely good news,” particularly considering that kindergarten enrollment is expected to double next year.
“I don’t know where we saw the increases from projected. I think that would be a good thing for us to kind of evaluate, to find out what really happened,” Palmieri said.
District enrollment is at a 20-year low. In the past two decades, it peaked at 449 in 1999-2000, dropped to 291 in 2005-6, and climbed slightly to 316 in 2007-8. Enrollment has dropped each year since 2010-11. In that year, 308 attended local schools.