Rockwood Enrollment Slips Slightly

Rockwood School District’s official student enrollment for the 2012-2013 school year is 21,951. This count is 250 students less than 2011-2012’s official enrollment count of 22,201 students. 

Rockwood chief financial and legislative affairs officer Tim Rooney said the district anticipated a lower student enrollment for 2012-2013. He announced the new totals during Thursday evening's Rockwood Board of Education meeting.

“As explained in our 2011 Enrollment Projection Report, the decrease in enrollment is expected given our older demographic and established communities,” said Rooney in a Rockwood news release on Monday. 

“Our projections were close to our actual numbers and we’ve worked with human resources to staff our buildings accordingly.”

Enrollment at the elementary and middle school levels declined, as well as at two high schools:  Lafayette and Rockwood Summit. Enrollment at Marquette and Eureka high schools increased, with Eureka High experiencing a 2 percent increase in enrollment. 

See previous article:  Guess New Rockwood School District Enrollment

Rooney also announced there are 568 students part-time students who receive services from Rockwood and who attend the district less than a full day in a week for the following various reasons:

• 40 non-public school students who attend the district's Center for Creative Learning one day per week are not included in the district's total student enrollment figures.
• 315 senior incentive students who do not attend first or last period due to superior grades are not included in the total.
• 146 vocational education students who attend their high schools for a portion of school days and technical schools for the other portion of the days are not included in the total number of students.

Rockwood Board of Education president Janet Strate pointed out Thursday that fewer students overall, however, does not occur all in one building or in one grade level pattern. "It's not like a specific number of teachers are not needed now that we know what the actual enrollment is," she said.

Rockwood Superintendent Bruce Borchers agreed that with 22,000 students, the decline was a "relatively small one."