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District reports second-Friday membership: net decline of 4 students from third-Friday count
Summary
Sheboygan Area School District staff reported a small year-to-date enrollment decline in the second-Friday membership count (9,319) — a net drop of four students from the district's third-Friday count (9,323) — and discussed year-over-year trends, school-level fluctuations and slide-number inconsistencies.
Sheboygan Area School District staff presented the district's Second Friday membership count and reviewed trends, telling the Committee of the Whole that the district's Second Friday membership was 9,319 students, down four students from the district's Third Friday count of 9,323.
Why it matters: Enrollment counts determine state reporting and influence funding, staffing and district planning. Board members asked for comparisons across matching dates (Second Friday to Second Friday and Third Friday to Third Friday) and requested further analysis of school-level fluctuations and transiency, which staff said they can provide.
Key findings from the presentation: The presenter, identified in the meeting as Rachel (staff member), summarized multi-year trends and called the decline "minimal" but ongoing: "You can kinda see the trend line shows you that the decline is, minimal, but it it is happening, and it's a steady decline over time." Rachel told the board that comparing Second-Friday counts year over year shows a larger visible decline in the previous school year (98 students when comparing last year's Second-Friday to this year's Second-Friday). Over a four-academic-year span she reported a cumulative decrease of 254 students when comparing the district's earlier counts to the current Second-Friday figure.
School-level detail and transiency: Staff said most schools experienced only small swings between Third Friday and Second Friday counts; seven schools had a fluctuation of 10 students or more. District staff and board members discussed the difficulty of capturing student transiency late in the year and the value of looking at within-year movement (third- to second-Friday comparisons) to identify unexpected drops at an individual school. A board member said, as an example, that a net change of six students at South High could mask dozens of individual moves into and out of that school.
State reporting and comparisons: Rachel and board members clarified that both Third-Friday and Second-Friday counts are reported to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI), with Third-Friday typically used as the district’s main reporting point. Rachel said the district reports both counts and can provide the comparative slide sets requested by members.
Slide discrepancy identified: Board members and staff found a discrepancy in two slides pulled into the packet: one slide listed 9,427 for a particular count while the slide immediately above it listed 9,438. Rachel said, "I can tell you that's not accurate. The accurate numbers are the numbers that are right here. So I'm not sure what happened there. I will look into that, but that was a pullover from a previous slide." Staff committed to correcting the slide and providing the accurate, consistent figures to the board.
Discussion and next steps: Board members asked staff to produce consistent year-over-year comparisons using matching reporting dates and to prepare further analysis of transiency and school-level movement. Staff said voucher enrollment and open-enrollment in/out data are available in Third-Friday reports and can be shared for deeper analysis of the drivers of student movement.
Ending: The board concluded questions on the enrollment presentation and moved on after staff agreed to follow up with corrected slides and additional enrollment movement analysis for future meetings.
