District sees total FTE gain of 275.06 students

By Megan Kelley
Editor
mkelley@mihomepaper.com
INDEPENDENCE TWP. — The Clarkston Community Schools Board of Education held its last regular meeting of the year on Dec. 9 where the board heard an enrollment analysis presentation from John Lucido, Assistant Superintendent of Administrative Services, specifically regarding pupil accounting data.
When counting students CCS gets its numbers from four separate areas – CCS (brick and mortar students who are in classrooms every day), CCSV (Clarkston virtual students who live in Clarkston), RVS (Clarkston virtual students who are out of district or currently have restorative agreements) and Shared Time students (students relative to relationships that CCS has with private schools throughout Southeast Michigan).
As of the Dec. 9 meeting, the district’s total full time equivalent ( FTE, or students enrolled in the district full time) count was 8,926.4, showing a total FTE gain of 275.06.
When broken down by grade level, the student count can give some insight on what the district can prepare for in the future, especially with middle school count. The class sizes at Sashabaw Middle School are relatively low for the two grade level building compared to that in the past. The outgoing seventh grade class shows 464 CCS students, but the incoming fifth grade class is lower, with just 432 CCS students. That paired with the current sixth grade class with just 419 students means the district should anticipate a small student body at the school. According to Lucido, there have been times when Sashabaw Middle School has housed 1,300 students, far more than the current number.
“With our middle school, this was the smallest student body we’ve had at Sashabaw Middle School in the last 12 years. And it’s going to be even smaller for one more year,” Lucido said.
Since the fall of 2023, the district’s shared services FTE count has increased by 290.84 with an increase in shared services headcount of 481 students.
District wide, since last fall, the headcount increased by four, for a total of 6,456 students.
The total net enrollment difference from fall of 2023 to fall of 2024 was an increase of 280.46.
“This is the only time, since I’ve been here, for 12 years – this is the only time that we have more students showing up in Clarkston brick and mortar buildings during that time period. So, it is great for us to be able to continue our programming and our class sizes and so forth,” said Lucido.
According to the district’s capture rate, Clarkston School is trending upward when it comes to the capture percentage of birth rates in Oakland County.
Enrollment across the board for most districts in Oakland County has been on the decline due to the lower birth rates, studies show.
Lucido went on to explain that while the district does not have an up-to-date study from Plante Moran, the district uses Plante Moran’s formula to try and make a prediction going forward on capture rate.
“We have the birth rate study, and then we have Plante Moran’s formula projection,” Lucido said. “Young fives through 12th grade student gain/loss projection, by looking at just at birth rates, we’re planning on being eight students down. Plante Moran has had us down to 44 (students). The last time we had a study from Plante Moran and the one before that, really showed us plateauing and actually gaining students but it hasn’t come to fruition. So we’re still losing.”
Lucido also pointed out that if the district had not ended up taking 68 school of choice students for young fives through kindergarten, CCS would be down 66 students.
From a financial standpoint, the enrollment changes are expected to give Clarkston Schools an increase of over $1.8 million in funding.
Going forward, the district plans to continue to monitor enrollment trends, evaluate general and special programming open enrollment and continue to look for opportunities to increase virtual and shared service programming.
Superintendent Dr. Shawn Ryan spoke to state that the presentation showed an overall good trend for the district.
“This is something to celebrate because we’ve never used – well we wanted to have open enrollment in our specialized programs, because we want to have as many different enriching programs that we can offer Clarkson community students. If we need to augment in any way to try to increase to make sure those programs are viable, we’ve been going after it. The other piece, obviously, financially, and everything else, the growth of the Shared Services has been just an amazing part of our overall financial and wellness for the finances of the school district,” Dr. Ryan said. “At the same time, you know, we’ve looked and watched the trends in enrollment, as Mr. Lucido said, we’re capturing an ever increasing overall percentage, even though it’s not great. But of, you know, for the entirety of Oakland County, the bottom line for that figure is there’s just less babies being born, the population of Oakland County, that way, in terms of not adults moving into Oakland County, maybe total population, but if you look at the youth, it has been shrinking. Looking at the programs and the different types of enrichment classes and everything else that our community expects, requires that that stable enrollment and looking that we’ve kind of cracked that with the support of the board. To be able to look at that year after year, to hopefully maintain. As, Plante Moran said, and other people that have reviewed our numbers, think that we’re going to plateau and slowly go up until we see it. We’re going to continue to do what we can to keep that stable enrollment.”
Lucido and board Vice President Stefanie Crane brought up key data for key subgroup enrollment when it comes to free and reduced lunch.
“There is a huge decline in the free and reduced lunch and we studied this to see why is this the case and the only thing we could come up with is you no longer have to fill out paperwork in order to get the free lunches,” said Lucido. “We think that even though we’ve been trying and encouraging them to do so, we think that there’s a direct correlation with that dip and the lack of paperwork needed for that.”
This was a concern to Crane who took a moment to encourage advocacy because of how many programs are tied to the free and reduced lunch filings.
“I just wanted everyone here to know that at least in the last two years that I was at the National School Board Association and Advocacy Institute, that has been a major talking point with every legislator that we met with and especially with the eight states in the nation that are doing free lunches, we are seeing a decline in people filling out the free and reduced paperwork,” Crane said. “We’ve been asking every legislator that we meet with, at least, to put it in their head. We need something else. There are way too many programs tied to the free and reduced paperwork and we’re missing out or we can potentially miss out on it.”
Additionally, Trustee Amanda Love noted that the district is not seeing an increase in students for its school of choice programs and suggested the district look into how to better attract out-of-district students to programs like the Construction Technology and CSMTech programs.