Austintown Schools remain stable with open enrollment

March 31, 2014 at 12:00a.m.

By Robert Connelly

AUSTINTOWN

Open enrollment in Austintown schools continues to generate revenue for the district, and the superintendent says it has kept many teachers employed.

Superintendent Vincent Colaluca called open enrollment “the financial stability of our Austintown schools.” He also said this is the first year the district is getting more students from other parts of Mahoning County than it is losing from the home district to other schools.

Paula Lipke, Austintown’s central registrar, said the district had about 140 new applications since open enrollment for the 2014-15 school year began March 3. She said last year overall, it had 307 applicants. “Typically, for the last couple years, we get the biggest push in the beginning, and then it slows down,” Lipke said. She added that it picks up again over the summer once the school year is closer.

Students who are enrolled at Austintown schools through open enrollment have to reapply yearly. Lipke said about 80 percent of returning students have sent in their applications so far, and each student is only allowed one application per year.

Colaluca said if it weren’t for the amount of money coming in from open enrollment, about $5,700 for each student paid by the district they left into the general fund, “well over 50” teachers would have been lost as well as a reduced auxiliary staff. The district had 569 open-enrollment students in the 2012-13 school year and that number jumped to 670 for the current school year.

Lipke said that jump might have been from a push the district made for kindergarten registration. “Last year, we really made a big push for it ... It’s great if they can start here for kindergarten and go all the way through,” she said.

If students apply to a grade that already is full, they can enroll in Falcon Pride Online, the district’s online school. Lipke said there are about 140 district and open-enrollment students in the online school. She said a student can take online classes until the next school year when they re-enroll and a spot at one of the traditional schools could open up.

“That says a lot that parents are willing to do [online school] to have their kids come here because online school isn’t for everyone,” Lipke said.

For every student who leaves the Austintown district to enroll somewhere else, the district loses about $5,700 from its general fund. For the first time since the district began accepting open-enrollment students five years ago, grades are closed off from new applicants. Those grades are 10th, 11th and 12th. Colaluca said the reason those are closed off to new applicants is because the district doesn’t “want to overload those classes and impact graduation rates.”

Applications for students interested in open enrollment, returning and new students, are available on Austintown’s website.

Applications can be turned in during seven scheduled “waves,” which are 11-day periods for submitting applications before a four-day closed period for administrator paper work. The wave system is new this year, and Colaluca said it’s to ease the paperwork for administrators.

The first wave was from March 3 to 14, and the district is in its second wave, which began March 24 and runs until Friday.