Board blames LRSD’s enrollment drop in lower grades on pandemic.

Officials and Community Advisory Board members on Thursday attributed an enrollment drop in the Little Rock School District’s lower grades to the coronavirus pandemic.

The district had nearly 900 fewer preschoolers enroll in 2020 than it did in 2019, according to numbers provided to the board at Thursday’s regular meeting. Just 867 preschoolers enrolled in 2020, compared with 1,765 in 2019.

The Little Rock district also had lower enrollment at the elementary level, which dropped by 739, from 10,785 in 2019 to 10,047 in 2020.

Little Rock Superintendent Mike Poore said the state’s decision not to allow virtual learning for preschoolers hurt the district’s numbers, but the pandemic in general did too, with families deciding to wait before starting preschool. He said the district is working to ramp up enrollment at the start of the second semester of this school year.

“This is not just a Little Rock thing. This is happening to other school districts as well,” Poore said. “It’s a dramatic loss of students.”

Advisory board chair Jeff Wood said the decline had “major budget implications” for next year and floated the idea of a state policy change, even a temporary one, that would allow school districts to retain funding despite an enrollment dip.

Kelsey Bailey, the district’s chief financial officer, said there was state aid available for districts with declining enrollment to help offset the budget impact.

“It is a significant decrease so we do have to play it accordingly,” Bailey said.

Advisory board members suggested that parents might be keeping their youngest learners home and holding them back a year due to health concerns.

“If I had small children … I don’t know if I would have them in kindergarten right now. I would do my best to protect them,” advisory board member Michael Mason said.

Mason and Wood both said they had seen some parents in their neighborhoods “pool” together and get retired teachers to instruct their kindergartners at home to avoid sending them to school during the pandemic.

“The decision whether or not to have your child in-person or virtual, involves kind of your own, A, level of comfort, and B, your own personal medical history and that of your family members and those who your child would come into contact with,” advisory board member Jerrilyn Jones added.

Jones also noted that the district’s website could be friendlier to parents who are new to the district, whether they have moved from out of town or are enrolling young children for the first time, and said she found it clunky at first.