Marengo BOE discusses John Essex declining enrollment

LINDEN — The Marengo County Schools Board of Education spent several minutes discussing the dwindling enrollment numbers of John Essex School Thursday.

“A year ago we met with a group of people and we discussed some issues we had at John Essex, the biggest one was enrollment,” Marengo County Schools Superintendent Luke Hallmark said in opening the discussion. Since that time, enrollment at the school has declined yet again.

Hallmark presented the board with several statistics indicating the difficult terrain the school is currently attempting to endure.

According to the numbers Hallmark presented, approximately 20 percent of the Essex employee salary and benefits budget is funded by the 1003(g) School Improvement Grant, funding that will evaporate after this academic year.

Moreover, the school is expected to lose one teaching unit based on the decrease in enrollment numbers Essex has seen.

Of the K-12 school’s current enrollment, only 51 students are in grades kindergarten through sixth grade. That leaves 76 students in seventh through 12th grades.

“We a lot of times that we take kids into school that have transferred in,” Hallmark said. “Our biggest concern is we are not getting as many kids coming in at the lower grades.”

Currently, Essex has only three students in kindergarten, eight in first grade and four in second grade.

During last year’s community meeting, Essex supporters expressed an interest in and desire to help the school increase its kindergarten enrollment numbers. Hallmark reminded the board Thursday that those supporters were told Essex needed somewhere in the vicinity of 25 kindergartners in order to be viable.

“That was one of the things that the community said was that they were going to go get us kids,” Hallmark told the board. “It’s always difficult when you’re dealing with a school that has been in a community for a long time. It is difficult when you are looking at three kids in kindergarten and the state says that we are supposed to have about 15.”

The low enrollment numbers have resulted in what some consider an unhealthy byproduct, the combining of classes.

“Instead of our kindergarten kids all in one class and being taught by one teacher, we’re having to put our kindergarten and first grade students together,” Hallmark explained.

“Our concern is our larger enrollment numbers are in high school,” Hallmark told the board, going on to explain that the loss of a graduating class of 13 seniors will only serve to drop the school’s enrollment numbers further.

“It all goes back to enrollment. In our situation, because we have three school systems, we’re somewhat competing for the same students,” Hallmark said.

While Hallmark never mentioned the possibility of closing the school to the board, he did provide the system’s governing body with a breakdown of how the salary and benefits of each employee are funded.

Two of the school’s teachers are funded by the 1003(g) grant that will no longer be in existence next academic year. The foundation program funds 10 Essex employees while one is funded by ARI, one by Title I and another has salary split between local funds and the foundation program.

If Essex were to stay open next academic year, one teacher would likely be lost to a decline in enrollment while two others would be cut due to the loss of 1003(g) funding.

Of the Essex faculty, seven are non-tenured. The support staff include four bus drivers, three cafeteria workers, a janitor and a secretary.

“It’s got a lot of parameters to it. It is a community school. Had it not been for the 1003(g) grant, this meeting probably would have been held three or four years ago,” Hallmark said. “And (the school improvement grant) did wonders with technology and overall attitude, except for one area and that was enrollment. We just could not get the enrollment to turn like we thought it would turn.”

The Marengo County Schools Board of Education set its next meeting for Thursday, March 20 at 4 p.m.