EDUCATION

Emergency manager 'very concerned' about MCS enrollment loss

Seth Slabaugh
The Star Press

MUNCIE, Ind. — At the end of the 2016-17 school year, 5,570 students were attending Muncie Community Schools.

Emergency manager Steve Edwards addresses the Muncie Community Schools Board  on Aug. 22.

The head count at MCS last Friday was 5,076, a decrease of 494 students or nearly nine percent. But that remains a preliminary figure. The official count doesn't take place until Sept. 15.

Still, state-appointed emergency manager Steve Edwards told the school board on Tuesday night that he is "very, very concerned" about the loss of students, even if it's not as many as 494.

That's because fewer students means the district, which expects to run out of cash this fall, will receive fewer dollars from the state for its general fund. (Transportation, debt service, bus replacement and capital projects are funded by property taxes).

The state appropriates around $6,700 to MCS per pupil, he said. Thus a loss of 494 students would cost the deficit-ridden school district more than $3 million this academic year.

Some of Ball State University's international students with children have not yet enrolled at MCS, according to Superintendent Steve Baule.

"You're always concerned when you lose students," Cassandra Shipp, the school district's director of secondary education, told The Star Press after the meeting. She is researching the causes, including how many transferred to other schools and how many are being home schooled.

Negative publicity isn't helping enrollment, added Dea Young, director of elementary education.

MCS has generated months of negative headlines, ranging from school closings to labor-contract disputes with teachers to the state's appointment of an emergency manager to teacher resignations to cancellation of school two days recently because of unsafe transportation.

All of the positive things going on inside the walls of school buildings are not getting much attention, Young said. For example, at West View Elementary School, site of a new magnet program teaching children to become bilingual and biliterate in English and Spanish, "Kindergartners are greeting me in Spanish — 'Buenos dias,'" she said.

The emergency management team has learned that MCS is not eligible for a loan through the Common School Fund because the assessed value of properties in Muncie per the average number of students enrolled isn't low enough to meet the state threshold, Edwards said.

The emergency managers had hoped to obtain a Common School fund loan for school building improvements that were supposed to have been funded by a $10 million bond issue that the district misspent on operating costs to stay afloat.

"We're running out of options," Edwards said.

MCS is eligible to apply for a $5 million loan through the state's Distressed Unit Appeals Board, Edwards said. But he has been told that even though the state has declared MCS "fiscally impaired" there is no guarantee the loan will be granted. That $5 million is needed for cash flow this fall.

Applying for that loan is "urgent," Edwards said.

"It is very important that the Muncie community understand clearly what is happening," Ball State economist Michael Hicks told The Star Press on Tuesday. "The state demographer forecasts population loss in Muncie through 2050, the last year of their forecast. No community in Indiana with below average schools will experience sustained population growth over that time period.

"Quite simply, MCS' performance, on a broad array of metrics, places it in the bottom third of schools in the state … While there are certainly pockets of excellence, the system is at significant risk of continued enrollment loss wholly unrelated to its financial woes."

(The state has graded MCS overall as a "C" school district for three years in a row. Central High School earned grades of "B," "B" and "C" over the most recent three-year period. Northside Middle School earned two "Cs" and a "D," while Southside Middle School got two "Fs" and a "D.")

Hicks also said it is important for everyone in Muncie to understand that the enrollment loss has been overwhelmingly to other local public schools: Cowan, Daleville, Delta, Wapahani, Wes-Del and Yorktown.

Private school enrollment in Delaware County is a fraction of what it was a decade ago, and charter school enrollment is tiny, he said.

"The rapidly increasing enrollment at local public schools, especially Yorktown, may well cause renewed growth in private and charter schools in the area," Hicks said.

The Muncie Community School Board met on Aug. 22 to discuss several follow up issues from transportation to the current state of enrollment at MCS.

Contact Seth Slabaugh at (765) 213-5834