OPEN ENROLLMENT APPLICATION PERIOD UNDERWAY
Monday, February 11th, 2008 -- 10:19 AM
It's open enrollment application time for public schools around the state.Open enrollment allows students to attend class outside their home district, and has created a decidedly competitive atmosphere as schools vie for the extra state funding, or fight to keep what they have.
Tuesday on In Depth, we'll talk about open enrollment with Neillsville administrator John Gaier.
"Parents really do go out now and school shop," Gaier explains. "I think it really has become an issue of parents trying to measure the quality of districts."
Aside from pure educational concerns, there's evidence extra-curriculars, such as athletics, play a big role in parents' decisions.
"And I think that's probably going to become a larger issue as districts are forced to cut more and more," Gaier projects. "You can see many districts, even in our area, talking about eliminating extra-curricular activities entirely in the middle school level, and reducing activities at the high school level."
Districts have taken to advertising on TV, radio, newspaper?even billboards to try to woo every last student. Trying to keep up with districts like Marshfield, Clark County schools are combining efforts to tout the advantages of smaller schools.
"Instead of competing for kids, (we're) looking at combining our efforts to talk about the values small schools can provide their kids. In our Clark County schools, what do we do that's better that the big schools can't necessarily offer," Gaier says.
Open enrollment has produced winners and losers, and seeing large schools fair better than small, there are more losers than winners.
For the current year, Neillsville has 25 more students coming than going, Loyal is down 9, Granton 15 and Greenwood 21.
More Thursday morning on In Depth at 9:03 on Memories 1370 AM.
Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.