Although the Average Daily Membership, or ADM count, isn’t officially taken until Friday, West Central School Superintendent Charles Mellon discussed the preliminary enrollment for this year with the board last week.
“We like to keep track of that because the number of students equals the amount of money we receive from the state,” said Mellon. “As far as the number of students we have currently, it’s identical to last year. Some of these people are migrant students that will not be with us all year and they may not be with us on Sept. 14, but they are in the count at the current time.”
The current enrollment is 868 students.
Eastern Pulaski School Superintendent Dr. Robert Klitzman shared the corporation’s enrollment numbers with the Eastern Pulaski School Board Monday night.
“Right now if we were to have the count day, our corporation, grades K-12, will be down about 30 students,” stated Klitzman. “The way the funding formula is now every student is associated with a dollar figure and that’s how you get your money. The more students you have the more funding you get.”
Dr. Klitzman expressed that he feels this method of funding is not only flawed, but counter-productive.
“Thirty students, if you spread them out, there’s not a single thing that I can do differently to cut expenditures. I can’t change teacher contracts – it’s a flawed system in terms of how you fund per student because you can’t do things per student. When you fund this way, I think it’s ill-conceived and it doesn’t serve public education very well,” said Klitzman.
