Lovell enrollment down as new year begins

Enrollment in Big Horn School District No. 2 has fallen for the third consecutive year despite strong middle school numbers and still solid numbers at the high school level.

According to superintendent Doug Hazen, the district’s total enrollment has fallen from 742 in September of 2020 to 738 in 2021 to 731 in 2022 and 725 this September, and the 725 number includes 26 students enrolled in the district’s new preschool program. Taking away the preschool students, district enrollment has dropped by 32 students from one year ago with 699 students from kindergarten through 12th grade.

Hazen said the decline is puzzling.

“I don’t know that I have a perfect answer as to why,” Hazen said. “We get an enrollment projection every year from the School Facilities Division, and that has had us projected to have some lower enrollments, but I have not been able to get a clear answer as to what they base those off of, because the only way that I think we could put major validity into it is if it was off some census data, and I don’t know that it is.

“But certainly we’ve been on this track of 742 to 738 to 731 and now 725, which includes the addition of preschool, so this is kind of our biggest dip over the last four years. We’ve been slowly sliding. I don’t think that means we’re sounding any alarms, but declining enrollment is certainly something that we watch and want to look at because, with declining enrollment, of course, there’s a funding component that goes with that, and then with any decrease in funding comes a staffing component, as well.”

Looking at the numbers, Hazen pointed out, a major element of the decline is an incoming kindergarten class of 36 replacing a graduating class of 59.

“That’s a substantial part of the answer right there,” he said. “We lost 23 (students) purely just in class size, not transfers in and out, nothing like that, just purely on what we graduated and what came in. So realistically, we were at 731 now we’re at 699, so that’s a 32-kid difference. That leaves us with a nine-student difference between transfers or moving or miscellaneous things.

“We’re not talking huge numbers, but it’s not good for us to have 30 less kids than we did a year ago and something like 40 something less than we did three years ago.”

Hazen said the district saw an increase three years ago in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic as some families moved to Lovell or returned home for safety purposes.

“We’re a place people come home to,” he said, “but then since that lifted they’ve kind of ventured back out. I don’t have hard data to back that up. That was just kind of anecdotal. When times get hard, families come back together, and we seem to be kind of a hub for families.”

Lovell High School’s enrollment of 221, while down from 236 a year ago at this time, is still two higher than the 2021 enrollment of 219, and Hazen noted that Lovell is in no danger of dropping down from Class 2A to 1A in football or from 3A to 2A in other sports. Lovell is still some 20 students larger than the largest Class 2A school, Kemmerer.

Hazen said a large class bubble is currently in the middle school, with a seventh-grade class of 79 and an eighth-grade class of 55, both of which will move into the high school in coming years, boosting the LHS enrollment.

“They’re going to graduate a 48 and get a 55, then they’re going to graduate a 54 and get a 79, which is our huge class, so the high school is going to continue to increase over the next couple of years, even if the district is decreasing, because the decrease is happening at the elementary level,” Hazen said.

Middle school enrollment, due to the bubble, has grown from 164 in 2020 to 189 this year, but the elementary school enrollment has fallen from 344 in 2020 and 2021 to 315, which includes the extra 26 preschool students.

Here’s a comparison of enrollment numbers in September of 2022 and September of ’23:

September 2022

September 2023

Grade level

Enrollment

Grade level

Enrollment

Preschool

--

Preschool

26

K

55

K

36

1

43

1

54

2

46

2

42

3

63

3

44

4

48

4

65

5

53

5

48

LES Total

308

LES Total

315

6

76

6

55

7

61

7

79

8

50

8

55

LMS Total

187

LMS Total

189

9

68

9

56

10

60

10

63

11

49

11

54

12

59

12

48

LHS Total

236

LHS Total

221

District Tot.

731

District Tot.

725

(699 without preschool)