District reports small headcount drop in January; resident pupil count down 49 from September

District staff presented the Jan. 10 pupil count and members discussed enrollment, open enrollment and membership calculations.

The district’s head count on the Jan. count date was down eight students from the September count. Staff explained three separate measures: (1) headcount (students physically present or absent but countable on the count date), (2) resident pupil count (students who reside in the district), and (3) full‑time equivalent (FTE) membership used for state aid formulas. After removing nonresident students who open-enrolled into the district, staff reported 5,712 resident students in January — down 49 from the September resident count. Staff said 42 of those 49 reductions were explained by students who were previously open-enrolled out of the district and whose current status the district could not reconcile with other public districts in Wisconsin.

District staff walked the committee through enrollment categories used by the Department of Public Instruction (preschool special education, four‑year-old kindergarten, five‑year‑old kindergarten and grades 1–12) and the mechanics of counting absent-but-countable students. The district also reported an increase in preschool special-education headcount (from 26 in September to 48 in January) and other smaller shifts across early-grade programs. Staff reminded the committee that attendance and count‑date changes can reflect transient population movement and timing of documentation.

Staff said pupil-count changes directly affect state aid and membership calculations; FTE membership requires further calculation using DPI factors (e.g., early-childhood special-ed counted at 0.5, four‑year-old kindergarten at 0.6, others at 1.0).

Ending: Staff will provide membership (FTE) calculations in a later update and continue to monitor student movements between count dates.