From the editor - Counting students in or out

La Conner School District Director of Finance David Cram offered a realistic assessment last summer when presenting student enrollment numbers and the year’s budget to the school board and Superintendent Will Nelson. The head count in the elementary, middle and high schools had dropped below 500, to 490 full-time students. He projected a student population of 448 in 2026-2027.

Cram’s forecast is turning into reality. His mid-March estimate for September, the 2024-2025 school year, is for 30 fewer students. His larger concern is that the new kindergarten class will be significantly smaller than the high school class graduating this spring. Those children become the senior class of 2037 with nothing in any crystal ball suggesting larger numbers of students joining them along the way or coming up behind them.

The decline in students is not the district’s fault. The story is the same throughout Skagit County school districts. There are fewer parents with school age children in Skagit County because there is not housing they can afford to move into.

Port of Skagit Executive Director Sara Young emphasized “attainable housing” in remarks at the La Conner Rotary Club’s annual Farmers and Merchants Dinner Monday night. The Port takes a long view in planning: Its Burlington airport plan was formed in 2008 and the $39 million invested since then she called a “vision realized.”

Young pointed to the 15 years it took to build a broadband spine from Anacortes to Concrete. She said the Port is playing a long game in developing a “huge master plan” for the former Northern State Hospital project in Sedro-Woolley.

For its La Conner Marina, acquiring 12 acres was a 16-year process. Two years ago, a possible future was introduced at a La Conner town hall that projected industrial, commercial, recreational uses and workforce housing. “Optimize is the word of the year” for the Marina in 2024, she said.

Meanwhile, town staff are inventorying unused and underutilized properties as a housing assessment. State government mandates call for most of the 120-plus residences projected to be built in La Conner between now and 2045 be for low and working-class people.

The parents, their children and others who work at the school district, in the marine industry and retail, restaurant and town government cannot live here until that attainable housing is built.

Other speaking at Monday’s dinner from the town, school district and WSU Extension represent major players in Skagit County, though their institutions are relatively small. If they can agree, come together and dedicate themselves for that longterm cooperation needed to first form then carry out a vision, and if they have the imagination and courage to innovate, they can create an out-of-the-box vision and plan needed to attract the millions of dollars needed to pay for it.

Young stressed public-private partnerships, meaning investment funding. Public means beating out other communities for state and federal grants. Private includes state and national foundations that are equally committed to supporting smart, sustainable and groundbreaking housing as model developments for others to emulate. More of the same or a tweak here and there probably will not gain attention or grants.

Monday, school administrator Beth Clothier discussed social emotional learning, which stresses effective communications and building relationships in a classroom. Students are taught to reach across grades to learn to feel connected to their entire school community.

Only by embracing such a lesson plan will adults’ hopes for a sustainable future in the Skagit be both envisioned and attained.

Only by being brave, stretching into the future and taking risks will the greater La Conner region fertilize, nurture and grow the dreams it wants to make real.