Published: September 03, 2008 10:31 am         

Concord schools losing students

DUNLAP, Ind. — A head count taken last week at Concord Community Schools shows a drop of 34 students compared to last year. But that is a preliminary count that school officials expect to change.

According to Superintendent George Dyer, the official count, which the state uses to apportion money to schools, will not take place until Sept. 12. In that count, kindergarten students — part time or full time — are only counted as half students.

Dyer said the count taken Thursday showed an enrollment of 4,676 students.

Some elementary schools, including Ox Bow where Tuesday night’s school board meeting took place, had an enrollment increase.

The number of kindergartners was up significantly from 318 to 343. However, there was a total drop of two students in a count of all students in kindergarten through third grade. There was in increase of 32 in fourth- through sixth-graders. The net number of students in kindergarten through sixth grade totaled an increase of 10 students.

The grades that saw a marked decline were seventh and eighth — down 25 students — and ninth through 12th, which were down 19 students.

“This count changes daily, changes hourly,” Dyer said.

Some students do not even start the school year until after Labor Day, he pointed out.

After the meeting, Dyer said he anticipates the school corporation may be down some in student population. But he won’t really have a good picture until the Sept. 12 count.

“The economy right now is one of the major factors (for the decline),” the superintendent said.

However, he said Concord is still overcrowded. “The students are already here,” he said, later adding, “We were crowded before and are still crowded now.”

So the building of a new junior high school is still necessary, he said, for the realignment of grades and for the large enrollment of students who will be entering the junior high.

Concord is building a new seventh- and eighth-grade building, making a fifth- and sixth-grade building out of the current junior high school and reconfiguring each of the elementaries into kindergarten through fourth grade.

Restructuring will eliminate two grades from the elementaries and lessen the populations there.

Dyer said, “We do not have any extra classrooms.”

Fourteen modular classrooms are being used “and we could use more.”

If space had been available, two more grade sections would have been added at the elementary level, but it just wasn’t possible, he said.