After half a century serving Stoughton children, Yahara Elementary will close next month due to the district’s declining enrollment — a situation made worse by the decision by many parents to enroll their children in other schools outside of this southern Dane County community.

But head north from Stoughton on Highway 51 and the number of children applying to get into McFarland schools from outside that district jumped this year. The trend is expected continue after McFarland opens a virtual charter school this fall.

“Every family has a different reason” for enrolling in a district outside of where they live, said Jeff Mahoney, director of business and technology for the McFarland School District.

An outside district may be closer to home or more convenient to get to on a parent’s way to work. It may provide more advanced classes or competitive sports options, or provide a broader range of academic options through virtual schools.

No matter the reason, locally and across the state, open enrollment — in which parents apply to send their child to any public school district in the state at no extra cost — is on the rise.

The number of transfers through open enrollment has increased statewide every year since the program was started in 1998, including a 10.6 percent jump from 2006-07 to 2007-08. The trend was similar in Dane County, which had an 18 percent increase in transfers in that time frame. The Madison School District also saw a huge rise in its net loss of students through open enrollment during the 2007-08 school year.

Gena Clarson, who lives in the Wisconsin Heights School District, is enrolling two of her three daughters this fall in the nearby River Valley High School in Spring Green.

The move is “something we’ve been contemplating probably the last three years,” said Clarson, whose oldest daughter Kayla will graduate from Wisconsin Heights in June.

“Wisconsin Heights is a great school district to live in,” Clarson said. But “as a parent, we need to give our kids what we feel are our best options. A little bigger school is the way we need to go. For us, it all comes down to academics.”

Heights parents cite class offerings

Wisconsin Heights, which has lost students through open enrollment for the last seven years, saw the biggest percentage decline in its student population of any Dane County district this school year due to out-of-district transfers, according to a State Journal review of data collected by the state Department of Public Instruction.

“Part of the challenge is, we have people living or relocating out here that work in the metro area and want their children near them at school,” Wisconsin Heights Superintendent Mark Elworthy said.

Parents also have cited more limited class offerings at Wisconsin Heights, a problem the district is working to address.
“We have nine new classes at the high school level this year and have had major curriculum adoptions in math, reading, language arts and foreign language,” Elworthy said. “I think the work we’ve done has made us stronger.”

The net number of students lost due to open enrollment in the district in the 2009-10 school year is down from previous years, and Elworthy said he’s optimistic the trend will continue.

Wait lists

Other districts, such as McFarland and Verona, have the opposite problem. Those districts don’t yet know if they’ll be able to take all the students from outside their borders who have applied.

“We do have a waiting list at most of the grade levels,” with kindergarten being the most requested grade, said John Schmitt, Verona’s director of community services.

The “vast majority” of families requesting to join the district cite the proximity of Verona schools to the Madison, Belleville, and Oregon districts, he said.

Finding out why

The DPI doesn’t keep track of why parents decide to change districts, and often, neither do the districts. But more are working to find out and are looking for ways to retain students, since every student a district loses means a loss in state aid and property taxes under state-imposed revenue limits.

The Belleville and Stoughton districts, which ranked high this year among Dane County districts losing students through open enrollment, plan to survey parents about why they’re leaving. The Madison and Wisconsin Heights districts have conducted similar surveys.

Rick Conroy, principal at Belleville High School, plans to survey families who have decided to enroll their children out of the district or plan to do so. He hopes he can change their minds.

“I think there are good programs out there, but I still don’t think they can match what we can provide,” Conroy said. Residents “should reap the benefits of what Belleville has to offer.”

Stoughton, which conducted a similar survey several years ago, plans to do another one in June in hopes of learning how it could better serve students or find out under what conditions families would re-enroll, said district Superintendent Mary Gavigan.

Stoughton is experiencing a shift in the age of its residents and incoming kindergarten classes have been 50 to 100 students smaller than graduating senior classes, she said, adding the district is working with the city to attract families with young children to the area.

The decision to close Yahara Elementary was the “financially responsible decision to make for our schools,” Gavigan said.

Virtual schools rise in popularity

Statewide and in Dane County, the total number of students planning to attend school outside their home district next school year is unknown. While the deadline to apply for open enrollment was in February, parents of accepted applicants have until June 5 to notify the nonresident district if the student will attend for the 2009-10 school year. And some could still change their minds over the summer, meaning final numbers won’t be known until an official head count is done in September.

Officials say interest in virtual schools, where classes are offered online — continues to be a big reason parents choose to go outside their home districts. Virtual schools remain so popular that the number of applications in Wisconsin this year could exceed the 5,250 cap set by the state Legislature. As of this month, about 1,400 students are on a waiting list to attend a virtual school.

Stephanie Funck of Sun Prairie is among those who have children on a waiting list for a Monroe virtual school. “I’m just a little upset, because during open enrollment it seems like nobody knew how they were going to deal with the cap when it was reached,” Funck said.

State Rep. Brett Davis, R-Oregon, is working on legislation that would eliminate that cap, set in 2007.

“No one thought during the debate ... that the virtual schools would become so popular so fast,” Davis said. “We thought that the cap would be hit within a couple years’ time.”

Virtual schools “were never intended and will not take over brick-and-mortar schools,” Davis added, noting the percentage of Wisconsin students attending virtual schools is still very small.

However, virtual schools are “a niche that is working.”