Chimacum School District saw an increase in enrollment for the first time in 11 years, and the Quilcene district also saw more students at the start of the 2009-2010 school year.
But the Port Townsend public school district lost about 76 students from last year’s enrollment.
Most North Olympic Peninsula public school districts continued to see declining enrollments this year, but three districts — including Chimacum, Quilcene the Crescent School District in Joyce — bucked the trend.
In addition, the Insight School of Washington, the Forks Quillayute Valley School District’s online school, increased enrollment by about 1,100 students.
Chimacum School District gained 50 students, from 1,060 enrolled in the 2008-2009 school year to 1,090 this year, according to figures available last week, Superintendent Mike Blair said.
“We really aren’t sure why just yet, but we are really hoping that the enrollment is starting to flatten out here,” Blair said.
Much of the Quilcene School District’s enrollment growth of 45 students — from 234 students last year to 279 students this year — was in its home school program, district secretary Pam Mack said. Superintendent David Andersen was not available for comment.
PT loses more than expected
Port Townsend’s enrollment decreased by about 76 students, falling from about 1,404 last year to 1,328 students this year.
“Unfortunately, this year we are also about 17 students under what we had budgeted for,” Superintendent Tom Opstad said.
“The challenge of this area is that there are fewer younger families moving in, so we’ve seen this enrollment decline for several years now.
“Budget-wise, we were impacted both by the lower enrollment and by the state’s budget cuts, so we were doubly hit.”
A summary of enrollment figures for other Peninsula public school districts is:
• Port Angeles School District was down 81 students.
• Sequim School District saw a decrease of about 25 students.
• Crescent School saw an increase of 35 students in the brick-and-mortar school and an additional 37 students in its home school program.
• Quillayute Valley School District’s brick-and-mortar enrollment in Forks decreased by about 40 students.
• Cape Flattery School District was relatively even, with a decrease of two students.
Enrollment is measured in “full-time equivalent” students, which is how the state pays for attendance.
Sequim Superintendent Bill Bentley said that the state pays districts about $5,000 per student, adding that the unpredictably of enrollment, state budget cuts for special programs and the continual declining enrollment on the Peninsula make it difficult for area districts to plan.
“If you start looking at a decrease of just 50 students — that’s $250,000. That is significant for a district,” Bentley said.
PA: More than expected
Although enrollment at the Peninsula’s largest public school district, the Port Angeles School District, declined, the drop wasn’t as large as expected — and so more teachers who had been laid off at the beginning of the summer could be rehired than officials had thought would be.
“Just today, I was able to call another teacher and hire her back full time,” Superintendent Jane Pryne said one day last week.
A total of 36 teachers have been hired back out of 50 who were laid off, she said.
In Port Angeles, the district had 3,932 students last year and as of the second week in September, the district counted 3,851, Pryne said.
“Even though we were down, we weren’t as many down as we expected,” she said.
“We had budgeted at 3,807, so that is about 44 students more than we were expecting.”
Sequim School District
Sequim School District decreased by about 25 students — from 2,769 students last year to 2,744 this year — Bentley said.
“Overall, that isn’t a statistically significant percentage, but we do see this continued trend of declining enrollment,” he said.
He said it was hard to predict how long the trend would continue.
“We try all sorts of things such as taking the live births in the area and trying to calculate based on that what the kindergarten classes will be, but we simply haven’t found a good way to guess the future,” he said.
“At a certain point you have to say that you’ll just see when they get here.”
Fewer transferring out
Crescent School District enrollment rose from 195 last year to 230 students this year, while its Home School Connection program grew from 107 students last year to 144 this year, Superintendent Tom Anderson said.
“Traditionally, we used to see a lot of students who would be living in Joyce but would transfer out to go to Port Angeles,” Anderson said. “But this year, we’ve seen a lot of those students remain in our community.”
He felt that the district’s commitment to full-day kindergarten at no charge also boosted enrollment.
“Last year we had about eight kids in our kindergarten class and this year we had 17,” he said. “Many people also like our smaller, more personalized environment for learning.”
Forks district
In Forks, the news was mixed.
The number of students attending the Quillayute Valley School District in person decreased by about 40 students, from 1,100 last year to 1,060 this year, Superintendent Diana Reaume said.
But the number of students in the online program increased from 1,800 students to 2,900, she said.
Even so, the online numbers weren’t up to expectation.
“We didn’t increase quite as much as we expected in the online school,” she said. “We were thinking it would be closer to 3,500, but any increase is good.”
Although the incoming classes are smaller than the graduating classes, Reaume said she is hopeful for the district because the kindergarten class has nearly 20 students more than expected.
“We projected 72 students, and we came in at 90,” she said.
“We even had to hire another kindergarten teacher.”
Cape Flattery
Cape Flattery School District remained fairly steady with 458 students this year compared to 460 last year at its schools in Neah Bay and Clallam Bay, Superintendent Kandy Ritter said.
“We feel a little better than we have in past years, and we are hoping to stay fairly steady for the rest of this year and through the next couple of years,” Ritter said.
“But we also don’t have anything in the community that would lead us to believe that there might be an increase.”
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.