Stevenson High enrollment drops again

As expected, Stevenson High School’s enrollment has gone down for the seventh straight year, officials announced.

The decline is not as steep as was projected a few years ago, however.

As of the sixth day of the 2012-13 term, 3,881 students were enrolled and taking classes at the Lincolnshire school. That’s the day schools typically measure enrollment.

An additional 95 students attend other schools because of individual reasons but are included under Stevenson’s umbrella. The school doesn’t include such students in sixth-day enrollment estimates.

In December 2009, the district received demographic projections indicating that the likely enrollment range for the 2012-13 school year would be between 3,865 students and 4,138 students. Most significantly, these projections included the off-campus students into the enrollment figure.

The most recent round of enrollment projections, released in January, also showed a more aggressive decline than has actually occurred. That reported estimated between 3,882 and 3,965 students would be enrolled this year.

This is the first time since the 2000-01 school year that sixth-day enrollment has dropped below 4,000.

It marks the lowest enrollment since the 1999-2000 academic year, when there were 3,782 students at the school.