Enrollment, diversity discussed

By Jamie Smith

Posted: July 28, 2009 at 6:11 a.m.

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BENTONVILLE — Trying to determine how many students will be in the Bentonville School District in coming years, as well as discussing who will be teaching those students, was the focus of Monday's Personnel Committee meeting.

The committee discussed enrollment, which is slowly but steadily increasing for the upcoming school year. Brad Reed, director of student services, said he believes the district will end up with at least 13,000 students by the beginning of the school year. Although the district's growth rate has slowed, the numbers continue to climb because the district is graduating fewer seniors each year than the number of kindergartners coming into the district.

The committee also discussed historic growth in the district, which could give an indication of how the studentpopulation will be affected in the future, committee members agreed. The committee was specifically interested in comparing the number of students in a given year's senior class to the size of that class of students in their kindergarten year. Board member Kim Mertes was the committee member to broach the issue.

For example, the 2009 graduating class had 727 students, and that same group of students had a class of 517 when those children were in kindergarten. That means that although overall growth has slowed and, statistically, some students drop out of school after their junior year of high school, the district has a history of classes that are larger when they graduate than when the classes entered kindergarten.

The question then becomes what that trend could mean for the district's future, considering that incoming kindergarten classes have been larger than 1,000 students for the last coupleof years. This year's seventh-grade class has nearly 1,000 students, according to figures Reed provided.

"It lends credibility to the idea that we would have the numbers (of enrolled students projected) even though growth has slowed," board member Marshall Ney said.

Superintendent Gary Compton agreed and said that although Bentonville High School may not reach 4,000 students as quickly as was once thought, the school will be over capacity in a year or two. The high school, which is increasing by about 200 students every year, is expected to be at about 3,300 or more students this school year. The school's capacity is 3,600 students.

The committee also discussed the district's efforts to increase its diversity among the teaching staff, which includes advertising in journals and through organizations that reach out to minority teaching candidates.

News, Pages 7 on 07/28/2009

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