Superintendent debunks report faulting Centre
Staff writer
A new report by the Fordham Institute tracking “underachieving and underenrolled” public schools put Centre on its list.
But district superintendent Larry Geist said Centre’s appearance was due to an oversight in data collection.
As American public school enrollment continues to decline, many schools around the country are operating at an unsustainably low capacity. One in 12 experienced a decline of at least 20% since 2019.
The Fordham report lists 468 schools that experienced big declines and were designated as “low-performing” by the state.
While the authors argue that the “low-performing” criteria can be faulty and the report should not be considered a “bad schools list,” it does present itself as a ranking of the most expendable schools in the country.
“When we move kids from low-performing schools to higher-performing schools, that’s good for them. And so this is an opportunity for us to do so,” Michael Petrilli, president of the Fordham Institute, said after the report’s release.
Centre was one of six Kansas schools to be named in the report. The five others are located in Wichita and Kansas City.
According to the report, enrollment at Centre dropped a staggering 60% from 2019-’20 to 2022-’23. That was the sixth-highest drop among all schools on the list.
But Geist said Fordham’s numbers were in error.
The report failed to recognize that the Kansas State Department of Education separated Centre’s brick-and-mortar school from its online education program, Kansas Online Learning Program (KOLP), in the 2021-’22 school year.
This made it seem as if Centre had a sharp drop, when in reality, one school had simply become two.
“The brick-and-mortar school and the virtual school used to be under the same school number,” Geist said. “The virtual school has their own building number now.”
While Geist acknowledged that Centre’s enrollment had dipped slightly post-pandemic, he said Fordham Institute’s figure of 60% was ridiculous.
“Our numbers are fine,” he said.
Geist attributed Centre’s status as a “low-performing” school to the same error.
The Fordham Institute used data from the federal Office of Elementary and Secondary Education to determine which schools were “low-performing”. But it collected data from the 2019-’20 school year, when Centre and KOLP still were considered one entity.
“Our graduation rate is 100% after they split out the virtual school,” Geist said. “One of the reasons they split virtual schools out is because our scores, our graduation rate… was all based on that one school building number. One of the issues with online school is that [students] think it’s going to be easier, and it’s actually harder.”
Centre has a large catchment area, leaking over county lines into Chase and Morris Counties. Tampa, Ramona, Burdick, Lost Springs, Lincolnville, and Antelope are all part of Centre’s district.
Geist said the school is always looking to improve its enrollment numbers.
“We try to put out positive things about the district,” he said. “We have a Facebook page. Hopefully that draws some people. Part of the problem we have here is housing.”
Asked whether he would try to contact the Fordham Institute and get Centre’s name off the report, Geist said he’d give it a shot.
“I’ll look into it, that’s for sure,” he said.