{"id":52191,"date":"2020-08-12T21:45:57","date_gmt":"2020-08-13T03:45:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-students-may-shuffle-schools-leaving-a-mess-in-their-wake\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:58:57","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:58:57","slug":"colorado-students-may-shuffle-schools-leaving-a-mess-in-their-wake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-students-may-shuffle-schools-leaving-a-mess-in-their-wake\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado students may shuffle schools, leaving a mess in their wake"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"One
One of the many parents arriving at Centennial School in San Luis, Colorado, on April 8 to pick up breakfast and lunch bags and to drop off students work and pick up the next assignment.<\/span>John McEvoy\/Special to The Colorado Sun<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

When Centennial School District R-1 resumes classes on Wednesday, the student population will have plummeted from where it was a year ago.<\/p>\n

The number of children enrolled in the San Luis Valley district was 122 as of Monday, down from 191 at the start of the last academic year.<\/p>\n

The 36% decrease is preliminary, Superintendent Toby Melster said, but if the number of students holds steady at this year\u2019s October count date, the Southern Colorado district could stand to lose half a million dollars<\/a> in state funding. It\u2019d be a heavy hit for a small school system that needs those dollars for \u201canything and everything,\u201d Melster said, including curriculum, upkeep of the school building, staff compensation and electricity.<\/p>\n

The district doesn\u2019t know why its student enrollment numbers<\/a> have tumbled, but a big force could be at play: the coronavirus pandemic. With it comes the prospect of families pursuing homeschooling, opting to enroll in an online school or heading to another district through outside enrollment.<\/p>\n

The stakes are high for Centennial. If its enrollment doesn\u2019t grow, Melster doesn\u2019t know how he will make up the hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost state funding. \u201cThe only way I get that per-pupil funding is if I have that body in the building,\u201d he said on Monday.<\/p>\n

Gov. Jared Polis, education advocates and some state lawmakers anticipate a spike in families using Colorado\u2019s open-enrollment process, which allows them to join any school district in the state. If Polis\u2019 prediction comes true with more parents moving their children into other districts \u2014 either for better remote learning opportunities or seeking a different approach to education amid the pandemic \u2014 Colorado\u2019s process for funding schools could be thrown into disarray.<\/p>\n

Geography has typically limited students from living in one part of the state and enrolling in a school district in another. A commute from, say, to Aspen from Thornton would be unrealistic.<\/p>\n

But remote learning has eliminated that barrier.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people in areas where schools are going back aren\u2019t ready to go back,\u201d Polis said at a news conference last week. \u201cAnd they are not limited, in Colorado, to their district\u2019s online program. They can choose any online program in our state. They can choose a different district\u2019s online program. They can enroll in online charter schools that have been operating online long before the coronavirus pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n

All the shuffling could potentially cause districts further financial distress at a time when they\u2019re already facing rising costs because of the coronavirus and bracing for funding cuts because of the economic effects of the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Read more at The Colorado Sun<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, journalist-owned news outlet exploring issues of statewide interest. Sign up for a newsletter and read more at coloradosun.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more at The Colorado Sun<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Open-enrollment process allows students to any school district throughout the state<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[685,155,216],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-52191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-education","tag-montezuma-cortez-school-district-re-1"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52191"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88052,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52191\/revisions\/88052"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52191"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=52191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}