With declining enrollment, Lauderdale County School District hopes to improve attendance
During the 2013-14 school year, enrollment for the district stood at 6,787, according to the Mississippi Department of Education. In the 2016-2017 school year, enrollment totaled 6,506. The decrease is not limited to the Lauderdale County School District. In the Meridian Public School District, over that same period, enrollment dropped from 6,166 to 5,557.
Davis said LCSD officials have decided to shift away from focusing overly hard on enrollment, and to focus instead on attendance.
“Now we want to worry about the students we actually have in the Lauderdale County School District — getting them to school,” Davis said at the board meeting last month. “If we can get them to school during months two and three, our ADA is going to be higher, which means that’s going to correlate with the funding we receive from the state. Even though our enrollment is decreasing, the ones that we do have, we need in school.”
Speaking in her office on Tuesday, Davis said the plan will be called #challenge39 — named for all of the attendance days in October and November — and that it will be rolled out to the principals and assistant principals on July 25.
Meridian Star
7/12/17
Magnolia Tribune
