Open enrollment is leading students out of some smaller school districts. Ron Gifford with the Starke County Economic Development Foundation told the Hamlet Town Council Wednesday that the state is now giving more detail about where exactly students are attending school.
In the case of Oregon-Davis, more than a third of the school-age children who live in the district go to school someplace else. “A hundred and forty of the students are going to John Glenn, 45 are going to Knox, and 25 are going to Plymouth. So that gives you an idea of where they’re going,” Gifford said. “But they’re also transferring into O-D. You’re getting six students from John Glenn, you’re getting 69 students from Knox, and you’re getting 16 students from Plymouth. So it’s a free-for-all.”
He explained that students are generally transferring out of smaller school corporations and into larger ones, “At about $6,000 per student of school aid that comes in, if you multiply that, you can see the school districts that are really getting hurt here. As bad as what Oregon-Davis may sound like, it’s even worse in North Judson.”
Local resident and former O-D School Board member Lee Nagai said that while open enrollment was meant to increase competition among schools, it’s led to some unintended consequences, like large chunks of school budgets going to marketing, rather than education.
Town Council President Dave Kesvormas said that while those numbers may not necessarily be good for the Hamlet community, it’s good information to have. “It gives us a little something to actually try to cite when we try to do something in some of our upcoming things that we’re looking at,” he said. “Some of the things that we’re doing might not be fast enough to affect this, and that goes with stuff like Stellar and fixing the streets and building houses and stuff like that. We talked about this before, more roofs has got to be the answer.”
“There’s got to be a reason for people to stay,” Nagai added. He suggested that Gifford also share his presentation with the Oregon-Davis School Board. Nagai, who narrowly lost his bid to return to the school board last week, says he’s disappointed that none of the school board members come to the town council meetings.
You can hear Gifford’s entire presentation this Sunday at noon on Kankakee Valley Viewpoints on K99.3.
