The issue of a declining enrollment in Vigo County schools is not brand new, but it is more important than ever.
The number of students attending Vigo County School Corporation schools has been gradually decreasing since the mid-2000s. VCSC enrollment stood at 16,420 in 2006. Today, about 12,600 kids attend Vigo County’s schools, which currently include three high schools, five middle schools, 18 elementary schools, one alternative school and a virtual school.
That amounts to 3,800 fewer students over a 20-year period.
But the decline has sped up in recent years.
Superintendent Chris Himsel explained the situation during a meeting of the Vigo County Oversight Board, a community committee created to help guide and evaluate funding mechanisms for the first two phases of a reorganization of VCSC facilities.
During his presentation to the Oversight Board, Himsel pointed out that the school district served 13,603 students in grades kindergarten through 12 in 202122. Just four years later, the total VCSC enrollment is down to 12,600.
That is a loss of more than 1,000 students in four years.
“We have experienced an acceleration in our rate of enrollment decline,” Himsel told the board.
It is easy to explain away the drop. Birth rates have fallen nationwide; the United States recorded its lowest fertility rate ever in 2024 at 1.6 births per a woman’s lifetime. Other Hoosier communities have seen enrollment drops; Monroe County Community School Corporation’s enrollment fell 7.6 percent from 2021 to 2024, according to that district’s strategic plan to boost its numbers. Vigo County’s overall population has dropped, but the number of family-age residents has fallen even more.
The predicament cannot be shrugged off, though. Monroe County’s two-year plan is evidence that other communities are trying to brighten their futures. Likewise, it is not a forgone conclusion that every Indiana county is in the same situation.
In fact, Indiana’s total population has been projected to grow 5.4 percent between 2020 and 2050 by the Indiana Business Research Center at the IU Kelley School of Business. Counties in central Indiana, northeast Indiana and southern Indiana are projected to grow, as well, including Hendricks County (home of nearby Plainfield) at 42.8 percent, Warrick County east of Evansville at 16.3 percent and Clark County (where Jeffersonville is located) 19.3 percent.
One prime tool for a community such as Terre Haute — which features an economy fueled by education as a college town and the local school district, in terms of employment and income growth — is providing residents and potential residents modern schools.
The VCSC’s school facilities reorganization plan can help deliver that by renovating and rebuilding multiple local schools. Yes, that plan includes closing some facilities. For example, Terre Haute North and Terre Haute South would be consolidated into one larger high school, and West Vigo would be renovated as a second smaller high school. Some other middle and elementary schools would close or be repurposed.
The three high schools have a combined capacity for 6,000 students, but the number of Vigo high-school age kids is projected to be fewer than 3,200 by 2029.
Delaying the modernization of the schools, painful as that may be, is not helping Vigo County. A solid, but not perfect plan to rebuild and renovate the three high schools lost on a ballot referendum in 2022, and the impact of that vote may have played a role in the family- age population loss. New residents and potential employers pick communities with well-equipped, modern schools.
“The realities of our demographic study indicate we must rethink how we proceed,” Himsel said Thursday.
“When this information is coupled with the reality of funding to support our students and the funding to maintain facilities … it becomes obvious we must think differently about how we proceed, because our current practices are not sustainable.”
He’s right.
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