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Official Tally

By Lisa Scheller - | Sep 26, 2001

Public schools throughout the area held their own in enrollment this year, according to the unofficial Sept. 20 numbers.

Richard Erickson, Tonganoxie superintendent said it was a relief to see the district’s numbers increase.

“We’ve been down the last five years and we’ve lost about 130 students,” Erickson said. “I feel real positive about it, it’s a sign of good things to come as far as enrollment in the district.”

Each year, Kansas school districts count the number of students enrolled, and that number is used to compute the amount of state aid the districts receive.

In Tonganoxie, the trend has been a reduction in the number of students enrolled in the district, so this year’s increase was met with applause by Erickson.

Tonganoxie’s full-time-equivalent enrollment this year is 1,411, compared to 1,403.6 in 2000, Erickson said.

“So it looks like we’re up about 7.5 students over where we were last year at this time,” he said.

And McLouth’s superintendent, Jean Rush, said enrollment had dropped slightly, but not as much as she had expected.

This year, McLouth has an official FTE of 538.5 students, about seven fewer students than a year ago.

However, because of an increase in the size of the kindergarten class and a graduation of a small senior class in the spring, Rush said, the total student head count is the same as last year.

“I feel OK about the FTE because the numbers are higher than my estimated projected enrollment,” Rush said.

“Also, I was anticipating the head count to be down about 11 students, but it’s exactly the same as last year.”

Basehor-Linwood schools saw a slight increase, with this year’s FTE at 1,983.2, compared to last year’s FTE of 1,980.5.