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Milton officials closely watching enrollment drop

MILTON — It's too early to say if an enrollment drop is a sign of things to come in Milton, but officials will be watching closely in the next few months, they said.

The number of students attending Milton schools dropped by 27 between September and January, from 3,291 to 3,264.

Business Manager Dianne Meyer said the end of SUV production at the Janesville General Motors plant Dec. 23 and other job losses might have something to do with the drop.

"I would assume that the majority of them were because of the plant closings, but I can't say that for sure," she said.

More than 200 Milton residents worked for the GM plant before layoffs started last summer, not including Janesville residents living in the Milton School District or residents working for suppliers such as Lear and LSI.

The Department of Public Instruction requires districts to count their students in September and January. An average of the September and January totals helps determine state aid in the next school year, Meyer said.

The district lost 20 students between September 2007 and September 2008, bringing the total loss since September 2007 to 47 students. That's a reversal of an earlier trend. The district had grown by about 100 students a year in each of the three previous years.

The recent decline, along with the nationwide recession, has slowed talks of a new high school project. Though the district will continue talking about the project at a special meeting Monday, there are no immediate plans for a referendum.

Continuing enrollment decline could change the entire referendum discussion, board President Rob Roy said.

It could also affect day-to-day operations, Meyer said. If the state uses the same formula and funds schools at the same level in 2009-10, the district will lose $79,000 in aid next year, she said.

Meyer has said the district could be facing a $1 million shortfall next year based on preliminary estimates. The district won't know its official funding until after the 2009-10 school year starts, when it gets its official enrollment and aid numbers and sets its property tax levy for the coming year.

The district is looking to all areas, including staff levels, for possible cuts, Superintendent Bernie Nikolay said.

"Everything's on the table," he said. "No decisions have been made yet."

This week, the school board voted to raise the price of school lunches in 2009-10 by 10 cents at the elementary schools, 15 cents at the intermediate school and 20 cents at the middle and high schools.

The district also pledged in January to cut energy consumption by 10 percent as part of Lt. Governor Barbara Lawton's Energy Star School Challenge.

The district will have to make decisions about other cuts by the end of the school year, even though it still won't know its enrollment or aid for 2009-10, Meyer said.

"We need to know if we're going to be cutting programs or not filling positions," she said.