Madison County Schools’ student-services staff told the board Sept. 5 that a surge of new enrollments and residency-affidavit work is stretching registrars and social workers, and administrators proposed creating a central enrollment specialist and using contracted summer social workers to meet demand.

The district reported a total enrollment of 21,287 students for the school year, including 3,690 new student enrollments and 17,597 returning students. Student-services staff outlined residency-affidavit activity as of the presentation: approximately 1,963 affidavits submitted, about 1,000 approved, 104 denied, 350 pending verification (students currently in school while documentation is reviewed) and 99 rejected for incomplete or insufficient documentation. Staff said pending cases often require home visits; they described situations with multiple return visits and said staff have sometimes made as many as seven attempts to verify a residence.

Administrators also described registrar staffing and turnover across the system: out of 29 campus registrars, 10 have five-plus years of service; seven have less than one year; five have less than two years; and seven have less than five years. All high‑school registrars reportedly have less than two years’ experience. Staff said IT and contracted registrars help train new campus registrars.

Student-services leaders said the workload of residency checks comes on top of other duties (for example, discipline hearings during the school year) and that the district needs a dedicated central enrollment specialist to coordinate training and verification work. Board members asked about a salary range; administrators said the role could be covered from existing at‑risk funding and that the job description would be presented to the board for review. Staff said they aim to bring the position online “very, very soon.”

Public speakers at the meeting raised related concerns: Brandon Price urged the district to focus on traffic mitigation rather than restricting students’ ability to walk to school (citing Every Student Succeeds Act language protecting parental choice on travel). Brenda Bryson, a local real-estate attorney and foster caregiver, told the board her foster children were denied enrollment at a district school despite providing deeds, utilities and driver’s-license documentation; she said the denial was disrupting those children’s education and asked the district to resolve the case.