La Conner student enrollment up

Numbers related to the COVID-19 pandemic have rarely been kind.

But La Conner Schools last week realized a rare exception to that trend when the district reported to the state an enrollment of a fraction more than 597 full time equivalent (FTE) students, 12 more than was budgeted prior to the start of fall semester.

State funding support is based on FTE data, so the school district will receive more state monies than anticipated.

An FTE student is one who spends six hours per day with the school district, La Conner Schools Superintendent Rich Stewart told the Weekly News.

“Funding follows the students,” Stewart said, “so if the student does Running Start (at Skagit Valley College) half their day and half in our district, this is considered one-half FTE and the district receives the prorated funding for this student.”

Oct. 1 was the deadline for La Conner Schools to report its FTE statistics to the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI).

“We have two figures that we report to OSPI, head count and FTE,” Stewart said, “and we are funded on FTE. Head count just means a student is counted as one regardless of the amount of time they are enrolled in our district. This results in two distinct figures. The head count is always higher than the FTE.

“There are many different ways that students appear part-time on our enrollment,” Stewart explained, “therefore we have funny numbers like 597.1 FTE.”

Stewart credited district Director of Special Programs Andy Wheeler with leading an effort prior to the start of school that highlighted improvements made this fall to on-line instruction and distance learning opportunities, thus convincing parents to enroll their children here rather than leaving.

La Conner Schools had to develop remote learning options in real time last spring when campuses across the state were abruptly closed to curb spread of the coronavirus.

La Conner teachers and staff spent the summer preparing virtual and distance learning lessons before classes resumed on-line last month. Those efforts have been shared via weekly La Conner Connect public forums on the Zoom tele-conferencing platform.

“Andy and his team did an excellent job of producing a plan and communicating,” Stewart said, “which has reassured parents that their students will be better served this year as opposed to last spring.”

The schools started 2019 with 591 students. In 2018, 585 students enrolled that September.