I went through the last 6 years worth of data that is publically available and put together this table which compares the student enrollment in the Whitehall School district to the number of staff positions. As you can see, enrollment has been falling (and is projected to continue to fall) while teacher and staff positions have either risen or stayed approximately the same.
| 04-05 | 05-06 | 06-07 | 07-08 | 08-09 | 09-10 | % Change | |
| # Students | 885 | 860 | 858 | 845 | 815 | 779 | -11.98% |
| # Teachers | 83 | 85 | 79 | 86 | 87 | 86 | + 3.61% |
| # Professionals | 6 | 10 | 10 | 9 | 10 | 9 | +50.00% |
| # Paraprofessionals | 38 | 46 | 39 | 45 | 46 | 37 | -2.63% |
I think these numbers are important for a number of reasons:
1.) The school board during the last 5 years lobbied for and spent millions of dollars expanding the physical plant of the school while enrollment was falling. It should be apparent that this was a very poor use of resources (as residents of Huletts argued). You may recall that the teachers supported this expansion. Doing simple projections on the expected enrollment over the next 10 years should result in a discussion about mothballing certain buildings going forward. It is absolutely reasonable to look into consolidating both the elementary school and the high school into one building at this time. At one time the buildings which comprise the school district housed approximately 1200 students. If current projections hold, we will reach approximately half that number sometime during the next 10 years.
2.) The teacher’s are very vocal about losing jobs and while this should be a concern to all of us, the ability of the taxpayer to fund rising salaries, benefits and other expansive ideas of the education establishment (all in a time of documented enrollment loses) has been reached at this point. Doing away with a number of positions based on falling enrollment is quite reasonable and should be expected based on these numbers.