(La Porte, IN) - The LaPorte School Corporation has begun to contemplate school closings and staff reductions in response to a study conducted by South Carolina-based McKibben Demographic Research which illustrated how the number of students throughout the corporation had dropped by 900 since 2008.

 

The study also projected that the current enrollment of 5,688 students will drop further, by close to 300 students over the next seven years and roughly 200 more by 2034.

 

Jerome McKibben, the owner of the research firm, said LaPorte mirrors a nationwide trend of fewer childbirths in an aging population. “Even before the pandemic, we had four states and 800 counties in the U.S., 12 of them in Indiana, that had more deaths than births,” he said during his Wednesday night presentation before the La Porte School Board.

 

Interim Schools Superintendent Dr. Peggy Hinckley said the biggest reason for the loss of students here, though, is school choice. Since school choice began in Indiana in 2011, the district has reportedly gained 240 students but lost 974 students with most choosing to attend school corporations at nearby South Central and New Prairie. She said the net financial loss to the corporation from lower enrollment is $8,600 per child.

 

To make up for the lost revenue, Hinckley explained, the corporation kept dipping into its budget surplus, which has dropped from $10.5 million to $7.3 million since 2019.

 

“We just continued to lose cash balance and that’s not a responsible fiscal position to take,” she said.

 

Hinckley said she’s currently pouring through data to help her decide what she feels is the best response.  Whatever she recommends, she doesn’t believe that more than one school building, if any, will need to close. She noted that there is a need for staffing cuts, but it was too early for her to speculate on the amount and where to make them.

 

Ultimately, the school board will have the final say on what to do to close the gap between incoming revenues and expenditures.

 

Hinckley said she hopes any decision to close a school and reduce staff is made no later than the April 15th meeting of the school board to give parents and employees time to prepare for a change.

 

“If we would do nothing and continued on this path, at some point, we’re going to have a problem. If we correct it now then we’ll be o.k.,” she said.