Just recently, school district “report cards” were released for the 2011-2012 school year. (Last year’s school year.) This is the last publicly available information on enrollment. So the most up to date information is for the LAST school year.
Numbers for the current school year (2012-2013) and projections for next year (2013-2014) are not currently available and are only released after budgeting is done for that year. I’d like to see projections for the following year’s enrollment be released as part of the budgeting process for that year but that’s another issue. However as readers of the Huletts Current already know, enrollment has been falling in the Whitehall School District (and is projected to continue to fall) while property taxes have increased over the same period. This is an update to my yearly enrollment table reflecting the most recently released enrollment numbers. When people talk to me about the Huletts Current, I get many positive comments about the coverage of this issue.
| 04-05 | 05-06 | 06-07 | 07-08 | 08-09 | 09-10 | 10-11 | 11-12 | % Change | |
| # Students | 885 | 860 | 858 | 845 | 815 | 779 | 753 | 742 | -16.15% |
The table illustrates that there has been an overall drop in total enrollment of 16.15% during the last eight years. Enrollment has declined every year during that time.
However the problem still remains, the population of New York continues to migrate to other states. This phenomenon can be seen clearly in Whitehall, where the local tax base is not conducive to attracting residents or business investment.
While the state has cut back on it’s share of aid to the district, the falling enrollment has not amounted to any cuts in property taxes. Losing 143 students over an eight year period has resulted in no property tax savings for the local property taxpayers. Hence, a spiraling decline in enrollment never results in lower property taxes, fueling the falling enrollment.