Enrollment is steadily increasing despite dire predictions
several years ago of students leaving the Morgan Hill Unified
School District in large numbers to attend other schools.
Morgan Hill – Enrollment is steadily increasing despite dire predictions several years ago of students leaving the Morgan Hill Unified School District in large numbers to attend other schools.
According to the latest statistics, the number of students enrolled in the 14-school district has grown from 8,463 during the 2004-05 school year to 8,657 during the 2005-06 school year, an increase of 194 students.
Arlene Machado, the district’s director of educational technology and information services, gave board of education trustees a rundown last Tuesday of last year’s enrollment, including average daily attendance money figures.
Average daily attendance is the basis of all school funding. When attendance is high, the district receives more money for its educational programs.
The district’s 2005-06 state base annual average daily attendance revenue was approximately $5,000 per student for all educational services, including staff salaries, instructional materials, maintenance and capital expense.
That means the district will receive approximately $42 million from the state in ADA funding during the 2006-07 school year.
The state uses the district’s average daily attendance records from the eighth month of the school calendar year, which was 8,361 for 2005-06.
Last year’s ADA base enrollment was 8,206, while in 2003-04, it was 8,064. The ethnic breakdown of the district for the 2005-06 school year is .6 percent American Indian or Alaska native, 7.2 percent Asian, 0.8 percent Pacific Islander, 1.8 Filipino, 39.4 Hispanic or Latino, 2.9 percent African American, 46.4 percent white, not Hispanic and 1 percent multiple or no response.
Board members looked at the distribution of students at the various schools in the district.
Of the 8,657, 4,703 were elementary students and 3,954 were secondary students.
School trustee Shelle Thomas was concerned with the population disparities at several of the district’s elementary schools.
Thomas noted that P.A. Walsh Elementary School, Nordstrom Elementary School, Los Paseos Elementary School and Burnett Elementary School had enrollments of 362, 649, 624 and 388, respectively, during the 2005-06 school year.
“We have schools that do better on the Academic Performance Index with more kids, schools that are Title 1 schools with low enrollment,” Thomas said.
Trustees joked about having Thomas lead a district boundary committee which last time only had time to work on redrawing the boundary lines for one school.
Boundary committees can be contentious, with members of the community many times showing up only to voice their special interests.
The last time the district convened a boundary committee was to draw the lines for the opening of Sobrato High School.
The committee was also charged with looking at the elementary school boundaries, with an eye to possibly redrawing them, but because the high school opening was imminent, the high school boundaries took precedence.
Last year, the Charter School of Morgan Hill had 425 students. Carden Academy, a private K-8 school had 112 students during the 2005-06 school year, while Shadow Mountain Baptist School, a private pre-K – 6 school had 117 students. Enrollment figures for Oakwood School, St. Catherine School and Crossroad Christian School were unavailable Friday morning.
