Posted on 10/13/2019 2:52:31 PM PDT by Morgana
CLARKSBURG — The home-schooled student population in Harrison County has increased by hundreds over the last eight to 10 years, according to officials.
Because of all those students leaving the school system to be taught at home leaves, Harrison County has received less in state aid formula funding each year.
On Oct. 1, when the county submitted its enrollment total to the state Department of Education, the number of home-schooled children had reached 582, according to Harrison Schools Attendance Director Jim Kirby.
Over his 15 years as attendance director, Kirby said he’s seen the number of home-schooled students continue to rise. When he first started working in the county, the number of homeschooled children was approximately 180 to 200 and stayed fairly steady throughout the year, he said.
“As time has progressed, the number of homeschoolers across the state have skyrocketed,” Kirby said. “We have doubled or tripled our numbers, and after speaking with other attendance directors around the state, they are concerned with their county numbers increasing as well.”
Kirby said the increase in homeschool students has a direct effect on the services that school systems can provide their school system as their state aid formula decreases based on the number of students enrolled.
(Excerpt) Read more at wvnews.com ...
If they are “educating” fewer students, they need less money ... at least in any rational system.
The superintendent of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools resigned “under a cloud” over the summer. Now he’s being investigated for funneling “educational technology” money to a company run by his own son and a former coworker.
So I guess that’s why they need to keep the funding up even if the students leave.
Pensions and retiree health insurance.
According to online data, the district spends about $9807 per student. The boo-hoo’ed $2 million funding loss on 582 students is $3436 apiece. The school district is UP almost $6400 per home-schooled student. They should be giving that back through property tax reduction.
So why are they crying? Evidently, the school district spends LESS than $3436 on each normal child. Far, far more is likely spent per pupil on “special needs” children than “regular” students. The balance goes for bureaucrats and other overhead.
“Because of all those students leaving the school system to be taught at home leaves, Harrison County has received less in state aid formula funding each year.”
They’re very cheesed off about it, too. Less govt loot to line those pockets.
I was homeschooled, and heard it first-hand.
What BS. Their revenue went down, sure. But so did their variable costs. Some simple rejiggering of the budget will fix that. With almost six hundred students gone, maybe they can close a school to reduce fixed costs.
I’ve heard this whining everywhere and it seems nobody in any school district anywhere has any fundamental financial planning smarts.
It’s not like this drop in enrollment happened one day last summer, either. How hard can it be to plan for reduced enrollment?
What’s worse is school districts are not asking themselves “What is wrong with our product? Why do parents want to home school?”
Every business I worked in dealt with declining revenues by quickly matching costs to revenues and then figuring out why the dogs weren’t eating the dog food to arrest the decline.
TOO BAD, TOO SAD! I had my children in WV’s failing schools at one point, which is EXACTLY why we pulled them out and started homeschooling. Flash forward 15 years, and they are both out of college and contributing members of society. Public schools need to learn they have COMPETITION now. Get over it!
Extremely hard, apparently. In many school districts around the country, the decline in student population is due to out-migration which has been going on for decades, but the districts still demand the same or higher funding.
As I mentioned above, retiree benefits are a huge issue.
My sister is in her last year of teaching after 45 years. She has seen the explosion of administrators happen and how they demand endless paper pushing BS from all the teachers that adds zero value and doesn’t teach a single kid anything. Most schools could easily lop off 75% of their admin overhead if the damnable government would stop meddling and demanding this garbage.
One of the dumbest things this country ever did was create a Department of Education.
It costs almost $2 million to teach a few hundred kids?
The article says it is actually $2.5 million “loss of state funding”. The cost of educating those 582 students is north of $5.8 million based on a $10,000 per student cost ,which is a low ball number on the cost. So it would cost the $10,000 to earn that $4,350 which is only logical in government finance.
“The newest numbers that we have received and broken down can be measured to around $4,350 per student enrolled in the public school system,” she said.
Well if there are less students they need less classroom space, schools, administrators, maintenance, custodians, teachers, sounds to me like someone is more concerned with bitching and moaning about people taking control of what their children are taught instead of letting the socialists continue to brainwash the children then actually reducing classroom space and personnel down to meet current revenue.
$10,000 per kid seems to be the going rate. Baltimore spends $18,000 per kid and gets the worst results in the nation.
Lots of districts do phenomenal jobs for $8,000 per kid or less.
Every day I thank the lord that my kids are all grown up and missed the Drag Queen hour, socialist indoctrination, and gender-bending crud. And they grew up conservative to boot. Oldest daughter is home schooling her kids.
And 582 less kids sounds about like 8 or 10 less busses and drivers needed, or at 25 students a class about 23 less teachers. This type of article is BS and schools and Pols pull this crap all the dang time and people fall for it. I’d bet you next that Harrison will put up a tax levy increase and tell people they need more money because they have less children, and stupid parents will vote it in. It’s all a scam.
Our town in CA was incorporated in 1954 and built about twelve schools in less than ten years to serve the post-war baby boom. When the last of those kids graduated around 1975 and enrollment plummeted, the city shut down three schools and sold the buildings and land. It was easy to do forty years ago.
Stupid decision, though. The old folks began dying or downsizing, young families moved in and the city didn’t have enough schools to serve the “boomer echo.” The city has been discussing a tenth school site for over TWENTY years now. Of course, land prices in Silicon Valley soared and they can’t buy anything for less than 25 times what they sold the old surplus land for.
It’s a colossal fuster-cluck.
Good summary.
My area, a suburb of Charlotte, NC, has been on a school-building boom for about 15 years. It will be interesting to see how it plays out. In my opinion, one issue will be that the current schools are building built near expensive subdivisions. If the next generation can’t afford to buy those houses at a premium, then the upcoming student population will be located in apartment complexes and trailer parks way east of today’s new schools.
It’s all, “Pass the popcorn,” for me: we’ve been homeschooling since 1995.
I remember the Principal of the grade school, begging us to enroll children of undocumented illegal workers. If the have a child on their register, they get MORE money from Washington.. I wonder how many advocates of massive illegal education are school principals trying to meet their budget.
We bought a second house in North Idaho to get away from the California insanity. This area is growing like crazy with lots of people fleeing CA. The town up the road tried to pass a $70 million school bond to build schools for all the families arriving there (subdivisions being built everywhere). It needed a 2/3 supermajority to pass; it got about 28% “yes” votes. People here don’t make a lot of money and do t want to tax themselves to build schools for the rich newcomers. It’s not pretty.
Congrats on 24 years of home-schooling! That is amazing. I honestly don’t know how home school parents do it.
If the school would improve their product the would keep the students.
Wailing and gnashing of teeth over lost funding, but never addressing the reason those parents pulled their children out of the school. SMH
I could tell them why parents make the decision to homeschool. We did it.
The cure? Stop kidnapping and indoctrinating our kids into communism.
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