Superintendent updates board on safe-gun storage campaign, facility tours and shifting enrollment

Superintendent Micah Hill told trustees the district’s safe-gun storage campaign is underway and has received local media coverage. Hill said trigger locks and cable locks are available at all high schools and middle schools; parents can request up to two trigger locks and up to five cable locks per request.

Hill announced building tours of underused facilities — Whittier, the former administration building; Cold Springs; Emma Dickinson; Prescott; and Jumbo — to gather community input on potential future uses. The dates and times will be provided to the public, Hill said.

Hill also provided enrollment figures comparing the same week this year with the same week last year. He said the district is down 123 students in kindergarten through grade 5, up 57 students in grades 6–8, and down 101 students in high school. Hill noted that if English-learner (EL) counts are removed from the elementary numbers, elementary enrollment would be down about 180 students compared with last year.

On EL enrollment, Hill said the district has more than 200 EL students this year, up from a cap of about 150 last year, and that the district is continuing to assess placements to serve students where space is available. He also reported county-registered homeschool figures for residents in the district: an average of 13 K–8 homeschool students per grade (roughly 120 total K–8) and about 60 high-school homeschool students (about 15 per grade level), which Hill said are not large enough numbers alone to explain the district-wide changes.

Hill described staff feedback on the EL program as positive and said the district is continuing to place EL students where capacity exists.