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Riverside Enrollment Trends

Dear Staff and Patrons,

Recently I received a request from a patron asking for the enrollment for the past five years in grades 9 through 12. As I put the information together, I discovered some things that I found interesting and thought I would share them with you. 

Here's part of the email I returned to the individual making the request: 

                          9th              10th                 11th                  12th

2007-08               46                57                    64                     59

2008-09               44                50                    63                     64

2009-10               45                43                    42                     62

2010-11               50                42                    41                     43    

2011-12               47                49                    41                     41

*Enrollment numbers were taken on October 1 of each school year.

...I'm sure you can do the math to see that there has been a 21% decrease in these four grades in the last five years. However, if you look at the bottom four grade levels (K-3), you will see a 17% increase. We have added two additional teachers in the last two years in our primary grades to address the larger classes and give our primary students the low pupil/teacher ratios that research tells us makes a strong positive difference in the success of students throughout their K-12 experience. (See the table below.)

                            K               1st                   2nd                   3rd

2007-08               48                48                    31                     31

2008-09               42                47                    42                     33

2009-10               38                42                    46                     40

2010-11               52                38                    41                     52    

2011-12               51                54                    39                     43

*Enrollment numbers were taken on October 1 of each school year.

Finally, in one of my searches on the Department of Education website (http://educateiowa.gov/; see article entitled, 2011-12 Enrollment Figures Show Slight Decline), there was a link showing five year enrollment trends for every school district in Iowa.  Reviewing that spreadsheet revealed that about three fourths (3/4) of Iowa's school districts dropped in enrollment over the last five years while one fourth (1/4) either increased or stayed the same. Riverside showed neither a decrease nor increase putting it in the top one fourth of school districts enrollment-wise. Statistics like this can only drive home the point of Riverside's stability as a district.

I pulled out the districts that are in our Western Iowa Conference league as a comparison. You can review the results in the table below.