In looking at the enrollment data from the Massachusetts Education to Career research and data hub I noticed something interesting. 
To the right is our district enrollment our enrollment from 1994-2024, which I graphed from the following dataset. Enrollment at a high level seems relatively stable, however when we look at enrollment between Middle School and High School there’s a decline. Below is a bar chart I put together visualizing this data.
Here is a cross tabulation showing the actual numbers with grade 8 and grade 9:
The School Committee needs to understand why there is a decline? Are course offerings not up to par with neighboring schools like BVT?
If so can we shift resources to offer desired courses? Is something else going on that is not easily measurable?
Because enrollment is a component of our Chapter 70 funding, we should be spending some time trying to understand why we loose students from 8th to 9th grade, not simply being content with loosing students. If I am elected to the school committee I’ll work with administrators to help retain students in our High School.
As an update (3/5/25), I see that the school has just sent out a survey posting asking for enrollment intentions for students for the upcoming school year – this is a great common sense suggestion and it’s awesome to see it in place!