ANDERSON — It was stunning to read that Anderson Community Schools expects to lose 600 students at the start of this school year. Daleville received 72 of those students, and no doubt Frankton, Lapel, Alexandria and Yorktown took their share. Last winter, amidst debate on whether to transform ACS into a one high school system, many parents made known that they would take their children out of the system if that happened. That’s come to pass.
It means a potential loss of $1.3 million to ACS because of students’ transfers. As a result, last Tuesday’s ACS board meeting was a grim exercise in arithmetic as board members were told the news of successive shortfalls in the next few years.
But that’s the reality schools operate under today. Revenues continue to drop, the governor is withholding funds and for parents there are no longer boundaries restricting their students to a single school system.
Those boundaries served as an anchor. Without them urban school districts, such as ACS, are especially vulnerable to transfers. It could be argued that removing the boundaries violates the spirit of Brown v. Board of Education, which ruled in 1954 that separate but equal is unconstitutional. Removing the boundaries will make it easy for students with similar backgrounds to move into their own schools. The state obviously never took this into consideration.
The immediate result of allowing students unlimited transfers is that school corporations are now competing for students. Arguments could be made that each public school should offer a full range of academic programs for students, but the reality is not there. In fact, some of the urban school systems have in place more sophisticated academics — such as advanced placement courses, foreign language courses — than their rural counterparts.
ACS has to capitalize on its strengths in order to lure students back. Current district programs are excellent and it would be a good guess to say that some students who did transfer out of ACS will find their way back when they discover the grass isn’t always greener in neighboring fields. But ACS shouldn’t wait and see if that happens. The system should be aggressive in selling itself to prospective students.
This is a new situation for public schools who, in the past, knew there would be some student fluctuations year to year but didn’t have to worry about a mass migration because it had boundaries. The schools that will survive and thrive will be the ones that position themselves on their academic strengths and let students know of the fine education they can receive in their own backyard.
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