Keith Whitaker and others suggested my enrollment numbers are inaccurate and misleading. Barbara Kline didn’t realize I omitted Waldron and OASIS students.
I was trying to determine what portion of the School District enrollment are regular (non-OASIS) on-island and (non-Waldron) students who could be expected to use the majority of school facilities. I used data available from the WA state website www.k12.wa.us.
I will outline the process using data from the Orcas Island High School as an example:
Point your web browser to www.k12.wa.us.
Click on State Report Card located on the right among five buttons.
Click Summary (on the top right), use the pull down arrow to select Orcas Island School District; click Go.
Click Summary again (it should say Orcas Island School District) and select Orcas Island High School; click Go.
In the right hand-column, Student Demographics data for the 2008-09 year are listed. For October 2008, there are 130 students.
To view other years, change the Select Year and click Go.
The 2009-10 statistics are from the financial report given on May 12th at the school board meeting (Thomas).
My analysis indicated that the regular student enrollment is continuing to decline from 500 students total in October 2005 to 395 students total in April, 2010. I did not include the 121 OASIS (K-8) students who are largely home-schooled or the 30 OASIS HS students who use the main school facilities on a part-time basis.
In contrast to the regularly attending students, the OASIS program enrollment is growing rapidly from 26 students in October 2005 to 151 students in April, 2010. These students are included in analyses by Whitaker and others, but, I don’t feel accurately represent students who use the Orcas facilities on a daily full-time basis.
The $27 million building plan assumes a growing enrollment in the OISD. The data shows the regular student enrollment declining and the OASIS enrollment growing. In the future we could have more OASIS students than regular students. Should we spend $27 million expanding the OISD facilities for non-traditional students and off-island students?
Janet Knowles
Orcas Island
