The Crookston School District, like many rural districts in the country, has seen enrollment decline as families and the populations in rural communities shrink. The district also had a dramatic increase in open enrollment out of the district early this decade (most of which occurs before families enroll in kindergarten) has helped contribute to a decline in enrollment during seventeen of the past nineteen years.
The current school year, however, saw enrollment increase when the school year and has continued to rise throughout the school year, which Superintendent Jeremy Olson credits to the work of the district teachers, staff, and parents seeing the value in Crookston schools. “This has been a really good year for us,” said Olson. “If you look at the increase in enrollment, it’s happened two other times in the last 20 years, so it’s been positive to see the increase in enrollment this year. I credit that to the good work our staff do every day and, also, the value the parents see in our school system. We have a lot of good things going on.”
Enrollment for the first day of school was 1,128, up from the final enrollment of 1,104 last school year. Interestingly enough, as the school year has progressed, enrollment has continued to trend upward and currently sits at 1,137. Olson said while enrollment tends to ebb and flow, the open enrollments into the district are exciting to see. “Obviously, there are ebbs and flows month to month,” said Olson. “This is not our highest month at 1,137, our high was 1,140, but we have seen an increase in the last few months of enrollment, which is positive for our school district. We’ve also seen new open enrollments into our district, which is exciting to see as well.”
The increases in enrollment during the school year have more to do with open enrollment than with new families in Crookston suggested Olson, which he added is a positive sign of family’s decisions to come back to Crookston. “We’re not seeing so much in the way of new families moving into our district,” said Olson. “What we’re seeing is families coming back to our district or giving our district a try looking at some of the programs we have to offer. Most of the enrollment growth that we’ve seen has been a result of families deciding to come back to Crookston, which has been a positive sign.”
Olson said while it’s hard to pinpoint specific reasons for the jump in enrollment, he believes it has to do with the variety of programs and courses offered. Programs such as gifted and talented at Highland, preschool programming at Washington, and course variety at the high school, along with the work the teachers put in every day. “That’s hard to say,” said Olson. “I do believe that we offer some really good programs. I think we offer a lot of variety in our course selection. Starting up the gifted and talented program, I think, has been a positive for our district. I think that has created some interest in our school district as we start to look at how do we make better programming for our students. I think all of those things combined with our excellent teachers and the good work everyone does a day-to-day basis has been positive for our district.”
Given the national trends of shrinking rural communities, long-term growth is hard to forecast for districts in those settings. Olson said the district is trying to situate itself for stable enrollment despite trends in the population that show a decrease in families having kids. “What we’re trying to do is situate ourselves and prepare for what we hope will be stable enrollment,” said Olson. “But we have to be looking at trends, so over time our enrollment will decrease based on the number of families having kids. When you look at overall residency numbers in our district, regardless of where they go to school, have been dropping in Crookston. The trend is we have fewer and fewer kids in our district based on family sizes. We have fewer and fewer kids in the country where we used to have larger families. So, all those things impact the school district. In this part of the state, we have fewer and fewer students graduating, and it’s definitely impactful to school populations.”
Olson said there is still a lot of work to be done to maintain enrollment stability within the district. But he credits parents and community members for the input they shared during the strategic planning sessions last spring and the staff for their work implementing strategies from those meetings in the positive growth currently taking place. “I would be very much remiss if I didn’t state how proud I am of our staff,” said Olson. “Just the work they continue to do each and every day. The extra efforts that our committees put forward, especially a shoutout to our enrollment committee which has been working on this issue and trying to improve what we do as a system. Also, those parents and community members who took part in our strategic sessions. A thank you to them for their hard work and giving us that input that we need to do our jobs better.”
For more on enrollment in the Crookston School District, tune in to Focus on Education Saturday at 8:35 a.m. on KROX.
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