Enrollment drop seen in public schools in and around Madison County

Alexandria Community School Corp. experienced the largest loss of 62 students, bringing the district down to 1,508. That was nearly twice the next-highest loss, which was 33 students at Madison-Grant United School Corp.

“We had significantly less migrant students this year opposed to last year. The weather and lateness of the tomato crop were factors resulting in fewer migrant students enrolling in our schools,” said Alexandria Community School Corp. Superintendent Melissa Brisco.

Anderson Preparatory Academy Commander Jill Barker reported a loss of 68 students even with some new families coming in.

“We had multiple large families facing some pretty extreme situations that had to move out of Anderson or out-of-state which was quite impactful on our enrollment as well as our APA family,” the charter school superintendent said. Some of those families, however, are returning to the school, she added.

“We are also starting to have families who stayed locally but chose to go to another school for one reason or another return to APA as well new families who have never attended APA join our school,” she said. “We anticipate a continuation of this growth as we have traditionally seen. We have open enrollment year-round, so we always receive new students throughout the year.“

The only public school district serving Madison County students that experienced an increase was Anderson Community School Corp., which gained 23. That growth, in part, is driving the district’s ACS Moving Forward facilities improvement program, said interim Superintendent Timothy Smith.

“I believe a large part of this is due to the facts that ACS has worked very hard to improve their expectations of students, we have increased program opportunities for students — COMPASS, dual credit courses, D26 programs — and ACS is working diligently to remove some historical perceptions that are inaccurate,” he said.

Though the growth has been steady across the district, one school that has to work extra hard to attract students because of the F accountability grade it has received the past three years from the state is Highland Middle School, Smith said.

“One thing we have done the past few years has been to send Miss (Leah) Maxey out to the fifth-grade classes to host tours of Highland to show students and parents that the negative perceptions about Highland are inaccurate,” he said.

South Madison Community School Corp. Superintendent Joe Buck said the student population at Pendleton Heights High School is greater than the primary enrollment at the elementary schools. Last year, he attributed that loss to less children being born.

“Last year’s senior class was larger than this year’s incoming kindergarten class,” he said.

But Frankton-Lapel Community Schools Superintendent Bobby Fields said losing a few students was no big deal.

“We’re pretty much full, I think. We have about as many kids as we can accept,” he said.

Unlike communities like Summitville, which is served by Madison-Grant United School Corp., which lost 33 students as families moved away, some communities like Daleville grew. That meant households brought 15 students to the district.

“The difference was due to resident population growth,” said Daleville Community Schools Superintendent Paul Garrison.