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As our school faces an imminent loss of funds and a looming budget deficit, we need a steady stream of funding to prevent mid-year cuts that would disrupt the school year.
Our high student enrollment guarantees the school a constant and secure source of revenue as the state is mandated to provide funding based on the number of students who attend. However, when enrollment decreases, we lose funding.
Normally, the number of students who do not enroll falls well within a margin that does not cause the school to lose a substantial amount of funds. However, this year we were under-enrolled by 50 students, costing the school $150,000, which includes a counseling position.
Traditionally, the school has accepted more students it could actually hold, with the expectation that some students would choose not to attend. According to the most recent enrollment numbers provided by the district, in the past four years, the number of acceptance letters has decreased and the number of students accepting those offers has decreased as well. This year, the school and the district made the decision to lower the number of offers sent out. At a Student Site Council meeting on Nov. 2, representatives from the Educational Placement Center said the decision was made under the assumption that because of the weak economy, students who would normally attend private schools would prefer to attend a public school to save money. While they acted in good faith, they neglected the recent data trends showing that fewer students have been enrolling for the past three years. By sending out fewer offers, the school inevitably faced under-enrollment.
A waiting list would be one possible solution to this problem and would help avoid further fluctuations in student enrollment. Lowell’s unique admissions process either accepts or rejects applicants, and the only option for students who are denied admission is to apply again as transfers in the next school year. In the process, students who otherwise would be qualified are rejected because of the decision to lower the number of acceptance offers. A waiting list would also eliminate the problem of unpredictable class sizes due to under-enrollment, because once a student declines to enroll, a notice would immediately be sent to another qualified student ready to take the empty place.
Another problem that needs to be addressed is the currently under-enrolled freshman class, which has 617 students, compared to the current senior class of 705 students. The school should aggressively encourage potential transfer students from both public and private schools to fill the empty seats, and by doing so the school will make up for the loss of funds.
Critics of these proposals say that by accepting more students, Lowell would suffer from overcrowding and might lose its distinction as being a prestigious school. By implementing a waiting list system, the school would follow in the same footsteps as its private high school counterparts and prominent universities and colleges. We need to avoid the repeated loss of mid-year funding and the confusion that comes from underestimating student enrollment. |
