Gasconade R-2 Superintendent Dr. Chuck Garner told board members on Oct. 19 that district enrollment numbers have dropped below the average 1,800 students to 1,749 students in kindergarten through 12th grades.

“Official fall enrollments taken the last Wednesday in September on the 30th, the district saw a decline in our K-12 enrollment from 1,802 to 1,749,” Garner said. “That is something we are going to continue to watch. We are going to continue to track the cohort data. This is what we utilize to drive our staffing and some of our enrollment things if you want to follow this. You can see how they do once they are enrolled and what we do to try to keep those students.”

District officials had expected an enrollment decline at the beginning of the 2019-20 school year, with an anticipated 1,788 students projected, but instead had 1,815 students enrolled. Garner spoke about the projection during an August 2019 board meeting that it was the first time the district had been below 1,800 students in 20 years. In the 2018-19 school year, enrollment numbers remained steady at 1,889 in K-12 grades. The highest enrollment numbers in recent history was 2,000 students districtwide in 2006, just before the recession.

Since enrollment numbers remained above 1,800 last school year, the 2020-21 school year is the first time the district has fallen below 1,800 enrolled students in 20 years.

Garner said the loss of student enrollment in the 2020-21 school year has happened over time and is not because of virtual learning.

“We have seen a slight declining enrollment since the year 2000 and then we have a bump year and slightly decline again,” Garner said. “It is consistent with what we have seen over the past 20 years.”

Garner said that the decrease in enrollment cannot be attributed to one graduating class being smaller than the rest, but rather class sizes being smaller across the board.

“Our average aging community is a little higher and as we increase the retirement age for adults, they are not having school-aged children,” Garner said. “When the community age goes up demographically, then young families are not moving in. There is nothing attributing to that, we just have to keep watching to make sure we adjust staffing appropriately.”

The current pre-kindergarten classes are full, but Garner said they won’t know until the Kindergarten round-up in February or March if the class coming in will have increased enrollment numbers.

Along with the decrease enrollment numbers, the district’s transportation report reflects a 10-percent decrease in ridership that is attributed to the correlating amount of e-learners.

“Interesting that it is also roughly the amount of our virtual learning, which is also about 10 percent of our district,” Garner said. “Our ridership went from 71 percent to 61 percent. That was the second Wednesday in October.”

Even though transportation ridership and enrollment numbers are down, the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has made it harder to find substitute staffing — to the point that the state government has waived traditional requirements and offered to reimburse necessary background checks, fees and training costs.

According to Garner’s substitute teacher fill rate numbers, the district has had better luck than its neighbors in acquiring active temporary educators. The substitute teacher fill rate in the district was 95 percent at the beginning of the school year.

“Of course, 95 percent is good, but we want 100 percent because when those classes are unmanned, we are going to have to cover that in house by pulling someone from here or there. We are going to work on getting those subs to do that.”