St. Cloud School District Sees Small Decline in Enrollment

ST. CLOUD -- The St. Cloud school district saw a slight decrease in students to begin this year, compared to last year.

Executive Director of Finance and Business Services Amy Skaalerud says in K-12th grade and at the district's alternative sites, there are 9,158 total students. That's a decrease of 91 students from last year.

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Skaalerud says the biggest drop was in 6-8th grade, where they lost 122 students. However she says that was expected.

As we looked at our 5th grade counts where they were at last spring, and did our enrollment estimates, we knew we had a larger 8th grade class going out and a smaller 5th grade class coming in. So while it looks like a big decrease from last fall most of that was anticipated.

Skaalerud says a bright spot in the district's enrollment numbers was the addition of 70 more kindergartners than last fall.

She says a factor behind that increase was families who had chosen to wait a year to enroll their student because of COVID-19.

Superintendent Willie Jett says another key difference in their enrollment numbers from years past is families choosing to homeschool their students due to COVID-19. Jett says based on emails he's received, he anticipates those families to return post-pandemic.