LAWRENCE CO. – The Indiana Department of Education recently released its enrollment data for the 2022-23 school year.
According to the IDOE website, enrollment data is calculated using the number of students enrolled as of Oct. 1 of that school year.
Here is where the various schools throughout Lawrence County stood on the day of the count:
Overall District Enrollment
- North Lawrence Community Schools: 3,659 students, down 227 students or 5.89% from the previous year
- Mitchell Community Schools: 1499 students, up nine students or 0.6% from the previous year
- Lawrence County Independent Schools: 243 students, down 58 students or 19.27% from the previous year
- Springville Community Academy: 167 students, first-year open
- St. Vincent de Paul Catholic School: 180 students, same as the year before
Enrollment by School
For NLCS, enrollment at Needmore Elementary School is down 21 students to 242, Shawswick Elementary increased by 23 students from the previous year to 480, Lincoln Elementary decreased by 20 students to a total of 322 and Bedford North Lawrence High School decreased by 94 students to 1,303 total.
Perhaps most notably for NLCS, enrollment at the Oolitic Campus is down 242 students, 174 of which are from grades seven and eight. As of the IDOE count, there were only five middle school students remaining at the school, as opposed to 179 at the time of the count in 2022.
Enrollment at Bedford Middle School saw a substantial increase from the 2022 count, increasing by 116 students, likely linked to the sharp decline of middle schoolers at Oolitic.
In July of 2022, members of the NLCS board voted 3-3 to keep grades seven and eight in session at Oolitic, after a proposal was brought forth to send all middle schoolers to BMS to start the school year. According to former NLCS Superintendent Ty Mungle and former Director of Learning Maggie Dainton, who presented the idea to the board for their consideration, the district was struggling to find educators for middle schoolers at the Oolitic Campus, leaving them with just two teachers for the entirety of grades seven and eight just before the start of the school year.
During the meeting where that vote was held, Dainton said that if the board voted to keep middle schoolers at Oolitic, NLCS would need to switch those students to a virtual curriculum, with non-certified substitute teachers in the classrooms to monitor them, instead of the traditional model of an instructor teaching students in the area in which they are certified.
For MCS, numbers were slightly up for younger students, but the growth did not carry with older ages.
Hatfield Elementary, which is for students grades pre-kindergarten to two, increased by 22 students to a total of 366. Burris Elementary, which is for grades three, four, and five, increased by four students, bringing the total for the school to 338.
Mitchell Junior High School enrollment remained the same year-to-year at 359 students and enrollment at Mitchell High School declined to 436, down 17 from the previous count.
Transfers
A transfer is defined by IDOE, not as a student transferring from one school to another, but instead as a student attending a school within a district that they do not live in. As an example, if a student lives within the MCS district, but has always attended NLCS schools, they would be listed as a transfer, even though they never attended an MCS school.
Below are the transfer statistics per school district:
NLCS
Overall – 1,055 students transferred out, and 79 transferred in for a net transfer of -976. This means that for NLCS, there are 4,652 potential students within the district, with 3,597 of them currently enrolled, which is 77.32%.
This is compared to last year, where NLCS has 4,615 possible students, with 3,789 in attendance, or 82.10%. In 2021-22, the district had 826 students transferring out, with 93 coming in for a net transfer of -733.
Here are some of the top schools and districts that NLCS area students have transferred to:
- to LCIS – 233 students
- to SCA – 151 students
- to St. Vincent – 121 students
- to MCS – 109 students
- to Eastern Greene Schools – 56 students
- to Monroe County Community School Corporation – 71 students
MCS
Overall – 277 students transferred out, and 148 transferred in for a net transfer of -129. This means that for MCS, there are 1,594 potential students within the district, with 1,317 of them currently enrolled, which is 82.62%.
This is compared to last year, where NLCS has 1,633 possible students, with 1,404 in attendance, or 85.97%. In 2021-22, the district had 229 students transferring out, with 71 coming in for a net transfer of -158.
Below you can find some of the top schools and districts that MCS area students have transferred to:
- to NLCS – 47 students
- to Orleans Community Schools – 108 students
- to Paoli Community School Corporation – 25 students
- to LCIS – 6 students
- to Clarksville Community School Corporation – 11 students
- to Shoals Community School Corporation – 6 students
