By Dave Stafford, Herald Bulletin Staff Writer
ANDERSON, Ind. — Anderson Community Schools did not lose 600 students in the current academic year, officials say, despite a report from the Indiana Department of Education saying they did.
ACS’s 2009 Annual Performance Report published this week says 8,805 students were enrolled in the local public schools, compared with 9,421 in the prior school year. The reported figure represents 616 fewer students.
“We’re not down 600 kids,” said Joseph Cronk, director of ACS’s center for information and technology education. “The numbers at the state, they’re not right.”
Cronk said this year’s actual head count is 9,125, which is in line with past enrollment declines and projections. That would represent a loss of 296 students compared with last school year.
The erroneous figure of 8,805 students appears to have been reported by ACS to the Department of Education, Cronk said.
“We switched student information systems this year,” he said. “We don’t think that system calculated the report properly.
“It looks like (the erroneous figure) came off a pupil enrollment report, and that number was wrong and was reported improperly.”
Cronk said a corrected number will be provided to Superintendent Felix Chow to report to the state. Cronk said the discrepancy will have no bearing on school funding, which is based on a count called average daily membership.
That count of students is taken annually on a specific day in September. For state funding purposes, the ADM counts half-day kindergartners as half a student, so the figure is lower than total enrollment.
ACS Business Manager Kevin Brown said the report of 600 fewer students had come as a surprise, and administrators had been tracing the problem since it was discovered earlier this week.
Indiana Department of Education spokeswoman Lauren Auld said the enrollment figure is part of the information that the state compiles in Annual Performance Reports so that parents and patrons can see how their local school and school systems are doing on a wide range of benchmarks.
More information on school performance will be reported later in the year, Auld said.
Numbers game
Getting a handle on enrollment in Anderson Community Schools is not as easy as 1, 2, 3. Here is a look at three figures that each reflect a reported tally of students, and how the figures were derived.
--9,125
ACS’s 2009-2010 head count of all students enrolled.
--8,780
Average daily membership, the enrollment figure used to calculate school funding. Each school district counted this year on Sept. 19. Kindergartners who attend half-days count as one half.
--8,805
ACS enrollment as reported by the Indiana Department of Education, which school officials say appears to be based on a faulty ACS pupil-enrollment report.
Contact Dave Stafford: 648-4250, dave.stafford@heraldbulletin.com
