The 2022 enrollment counts in Pulaski County's largest public school districts are a mixed bag.
The Little Rock School District's count of 21,456 for prekindergarten-through-12th grades is the lowest in 10 years, falling by almost 600 students.
The North Little Rock School District's count of 7,642 is down slightly -- 57 students -- compared with the 7,699 recorded in October 2021 but up over the 2020-21 pandemic year count of 7,623.
In contrast, the Pulaski County Special School District's enrollment is up by 212 compared with the count last year -- 11,626 this year and 11,414 last year.
The October enrollments for school districts are routinely cited as a district's official enrollment for a school year. While the counts can signal the possible gain or loss of state funding in the following school year, state funding for the coming year is actually based on the average of the enrollment counts in each of the first three nine-week grading periods of a school year -- "the three-quarter average."
The Little Rock district's total of 21,456 this year not only dropped by 598 below last year's count of 22,054 but also falls below the 21,612 reported in the 2020-21 school year when schools were in the worst grip of the global covid-19 pandemic.
The capital city district had a high count of 25,110 in the 2013-14 school year, according to records provided this week by the district's Student Registration Office.
The enrollment decline comes during a period of transition for the district.
The district, which shut down the Booker and Meadowcliff elementary campuses at the end of last school year, is operating with a largely new administrative leadership team. Superintendent Jermall Wright took the system's top job in July after Mike Poore retired and Deputy Superintendent Keith McGee became a state-appointed superintendent in Helena-West Helena.
The Little Rock system is paying attention to the declining numbers.
Even before the start of this school year, the Little Rock School Board had made student recruitment and retention -- to achieve a count of 24,000 by 2030 -- a primary goal for the district.
(The other board-approved goals center on college and career readiness -- including yearly 2% growth or more in math and literacy; increasing by 5% annually the number of students enrolled in career and technical education and the number of students earning an industry certification; and increasing recruitment and retention rates of highly qualified teachers, in part by offering salaries that rank among the top school districts in the state. )
Wright, the superintendent, talked about the enrollment at the first in a series of "Community Conversations" he will hold throughout the school year.
The new superintendent said the district is not currently surveying parents and students about why they are leaving the district and, in particular, leaving the elementary schools. But he said that is about to change as the district moves to streamline its processes for registering students for each new school year.
"Part of the new tool or new platform that we will be using for registration will allow us to do that," he said.
"And, we are trying to secure a demographer to look at birth rates, to look at areas of the city where population is growing or decreasing," Wright continued. "A part of the demographer's services will be to also look where our kids have gone, whether they have gone to private or gone to charter [schools]. We will be able to use that service to tell us 'why?'"
Told by a forum audience member that delays and bureaucracy in resolving problems are frustrating to families and may be a contributor to enrollment declines, Wright responded that the district is experimenting with the use of an ombudsman. That person will act as an intermediary when a parent complaint has not been resolved at the campus level.
"We want to bring resolution to conflicts between schools and the parents much faster than we have in the past," Wright said.
Wright is asking participants in the Community Conversations and the public in general to respond to questions about why families leave the district, what would attract families to the district and how the district can better engage parents and get them to support student attendance and academic interventions.
Another Community Conversation with Wright is set for 5:30 p.m. Thursday at Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church, 4823 Woodlawn Drive in Little Rock, and another is set for 5:30 p.m. Nov. 14 at Life Line Baptist Church, 7601 Baseline Road, Little Rock.
Regarding the enrollment data for the Little Rock district, Central High remains the largest in the district with 2,338 students, which is a drop from the recent past. Last year the school had 2,506 students. The district's Southwest High has a count of 2,014. Hall STEAM Magnet School has 335 students, up from 259 last year. West High School of Innovation has grown to 325, up from 234 last year and 126 the year before that. Parkview Magnet High has an enrollment of 1,081 this year.
PCSSD GROWTH
The Pulaski County Special School District reported an enrollment of 11,626, which is up 212 students from the same time last school year.
The district's elementary enrollment is 5,382 and the secondary enrollment is 6,244.
The district's growth is at the elementary level that grew by 240 over the past year. The enrollment for the middle and high schools fell by 28 students from 6,272.
The district's Driven Virtual Academy had an elementary enrollment of 68 and a secondary enrollment of 198 for a total of 266. That is down from a total of 452 -- 202 in the elementary and 250 in the secondary grades -- in the 2021-22 school year.
Sylvan Hills Middle School, with an enrollment of 1,068, is the largest school in the Pulaski County Special School District. Robinson Middle School has a count of 521.
College Station Elementary is the smallest with 135 pupils. Harris Elementary follows with 155 and Oak Grove Elementary with 193.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article listed the wrong enrollment for Robinson Middle School and misidentified the largest school in the district.