Despite closures due to the threat of COVID-19, the overall state of Brown County Schools is strong.
In this week’s Marketplace section of The Democrat, the corporation’s annual performance report is printed in its entirety. That report gives data for for each school about enrollment, the number of certified teachers, standardized test passing rates, attendance rates and the number of students who have been disciplined with suspensions or expulsions.
Data is available from school year 2015-2016 to last school year.
Staffing
The annual performance report shows a steady decline of certified teachers in the district since 2015. Last school year, the district employed 123 certified teachers, compared to 140 for 2015-2016.
The school district has been in a mode of eliminating jobs through attrition as a way to help the budget and make sure the number of staff line up with the number of students attending school in light of declining enrollment.
Pay and aid
On the flip side, the minimum salary for teachers has increased from $33,000 in 2015-2016 to $38,000 last school year. Teacher pay continues to increase.
The school board unanimously approved a contract for 2019-2020 with the Brown County Educators Association in November.
The biggest raise a teacher received was $5,050 and the smallest raise was $1,825 for teachers who hold bachelor’s degrees.
Last year, Gov. Eric Holcomb announced that the state would pick up 2 percent of the 7.5 percent that school districts had been paying into the teacher retirement fund, in hopes that that extra 2 percent would then go to certified staff raises, Hammack said. For Brown County, that 2 percent equaled around $120,000, and that was used to pay for certified staff raises.
The raises this year are also funded by a referendum. Voters approved adding 8 cents per $100 of assessed value to the property tax rate in May 2016. That lasts for seven years.
The percentage of students receiving free or reduced price lunches has remained consistent since 2015, ranging between 51.6 percent for 2015-2016 to 52.4 percent last school year.
“There were no surprises,” Superintendent Laura Hammack said about this year’s annual performance report (APR).
“We think it’s really important to publish the APRs because it gives a snapshot to what’s happening in the schools. What I love is every time they have published, I have gotten at least one call where someone is asking about something. It’s never in a challenging way, but genuine interest. Those are my favorite phone calls,” she said.
Enrollment
At the March 5 school board meeting, Hammack announced the student count for February, which will determine how much the district will receive in tuition support from the state until the end of the year.
The school district has continually faced declining enrollment as families move out of the county or choose to send their children to school elsewhere for various reasons.
Students who graduate mid-year also have affected the tuition support the district receives. The district had 10 mid-year graduates from Brown County High School, and were down another 16 students compared to the student count day this past September. Altogether, that made a drop of 26 students.
“We expected to be down. We always are down in this time of year after the September ADM date,” Hammack said.
“It’s very good for us to be honest. I know that sounds alarming because it’s a significant number down, but it is better than what we have experienced in the past.”
Starting next school year, the district will operate under a trimester schedule. This means that the schools will operate on three, 12-week grading periods instead of the two, 18-week semesters currently.
Hammack said for the February count next year, mid-year graduates will be counted.
“It is a very happy accident. Students who would most likely graduate mid-year now will most likely graduate after the second trimester, which is after the February ADM date,” she said.
“This was not intentional, it was not a budget strategy to move to trimester, but it is a really nice implication that was unexpected.”
If the trimester schedule was put in place this year, that means the district would have only counted 16 fewer students instead of 26.
Looking ahead
Student enrollment was 2,107 in 2015-2016. Last school year, it was 1,904.
On Feb. 28, the school board and administrators met for a daylong retreat to discuss enrollment forecasts and strategic planning.
Don Dyck with Strategic Leadership gave an update on demographic and student enrollment forecasts based on the most recent birth rates, population age groups and historical school enrollment.
According to the report, from 2010 to 2017, the population in Brown County decreased by 165 people. A 2019 Indiana Uplands Regional Housing Study forecasts a population increase through 2030, “reaching a most likely total of 15,293,” the report states.
“These data lead to the assumption that the population served by Brown County Schools will remain fairly stable over the next few years,” the report states.
In 2017, the total population in Brown County was 15,035, according to the report and STATS Indiana.
From 2000 to 2018, the number of people living here aged 25 to 44 — generally, the parents of school-aged children — declined by nearly 28 percent. Since 2010, the number of residents living here over the age of 65 increased by 90 percent, the report said.
But the report also shows that a decline in births in the county is slowing. “What’s been really good news for Brown County is that we’ve had declining birth rates for such a time. What’s cool is though we don’t recoup where we once were, we maintain this base,” Hammack said.
“Then once you matriculate through each grade level, as they would transition up, then we get to this new position of normalcy, which is birth rates match what we’re seeing in the schools.”
The report also shows enrollment declining more rapidly for high school grades and less rapidly for younger grade groups, meaning students who attend school younger in Brown County tend to not transfer out as much.
“The forecast is such that though it will decline for a few years, once we get to sort of our new normal, that will remain our normal from that point on into the future. It will be a few more years (until that happens),” Hammack said.
Hammack said the newest forecast is not a “doomsday forecast,” but rather a call for the district to be responsible in its decision making.
“It’s our responsibility, now until that time, to continue to right-size to make sure that our staffing is matching the number of students that we’re serving,” she said.
The school district is done apologizing for the fact that it has declining enrollment. Now, the district is going to embrace it, she said.
“We want to be the best little district in the state of Indiana. Nothing is going to get in our way of that,” Hammack said.
“We’re owning it and celebrating.”
The district continues to provide opportunities to students thanks to grant funding, like the startup of Eagle Manufacturing at the high school which was funded by the ROI Ready Schools Initiative grant.
“It’s not as if we’re needing to cut programming. We’re just trying to match staffing,” Hammack said.
Close a school?
Another takeaway from the retreat and the updated forecast is that closing a school building is not necessary, Hammack said.
“Closing a school has always been on the table. That’s always been a potential,” she said.
“When you look at these demographic reports, the idea of closing an outlying building is really off the table. It’s so challenging to get our students back and forth anyway. That idea of closing an outlying building really was not recommended.”
Ideally, if changes needed to be made, the Nashville campus would be reconfigured instead.
“How me might use one of the buildings here for other purposes, then redistribute grade levels in the buildings that we would have? We’re not there yet,” Hammack said.
The district has been helped by some major grant funding.
Last fall, Brown County Schools received a $5.5 million federal grant to support and provide additional training to the district’s teachers as they help students reach educational benchmarks. The grant will be used to implement the TAP System for Teacher and Student Advancement, which involves having master and multiple mentor teachers in each school building.
“The grant allows us to move off those master teacher salaries, and they will be totally paid for by the grant. That doesn’t mean the education fund realizes every single one of those master teachers in savings, but some,” Hammack said.
“For those positions we don’t need to fill, or for those that were already being funded with the education fund that we’re now able to move off, those we’re able to kind of capture to help us reduce the budget magically. Once the grant dollars are received, that’s going to happen.”
Overall, the school district will continue on its path, reducing staff as those positions become available and making other budget cuts where they can. The school district has cut more than $2 million from its budget since Hammack took over as superintendent almost four years ago.
“It is so nice when the hard work you’ve been doing in making these reductions actually translates to the bottom line and you can see it. That is a real celebration. It is working,” Hammack said.
“The state of our schools is strong. I have never felt more optimistic about our future, and that is just really fun to say. Our budget is strong. This grant is going to take us to places of teaching and learning that we have not seen before.
“It’s just a great day to be an Eagle.”
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Last school year, the district received a B as its accountability grade from the state. The majority of schools received Bs, with Brown County Intermediate School receiving an A and Van Buren Elementary School receiving a C.
Each school also received an accountability ranking from the federal government. Under that system, almost all schools meet expectations, with Brown County Junior High School being the only one that “approaches expectations.”
The federal government rates schools from “does not meet” to “exceeds” expectations instead of issuing a letter grade like the state does.
“I’m never going to be the superintendent who stands out in front of the community and says ‘We have all As’ when we have all As. … I care so much more about other indicators, this just happens to be one that we just don’t really get too riled up about,” Superintendent Laura Hammack said.
For students in Grades 3 through 8, state accountability grades are based on how many students passed the ISTEP+ test last spring and how those students have grown academically on that test.
For 10th-grader, the same factors are considered, plus the high school’s graduation rate and the school’s college and career readiness indicator score. That score comes from the number of students who have passed an AP exam and the number of dual college credits and industry certifications that are obtained in the school.
Attendance also factors into state accountability grades.
In February, Gov. Eric Holcomb signed a law that said that a school’s accountability grade for 2018-2019 could not be lower than the 2017-2018 grades. The state legislature has voted to hold schools harmless for their letter grades since they are partially based on standardized test scores.
Students took the new ILEARN standardized test at the end of last school year that replaced ISTEP.
“We don’t expect the legislature will add a third year of ‘hold harmless,'” Hammack said about next year’s accountability grades.
“Basically, the idea behind that is that then we’ll have two attempts at ILEARN, and the data from this year’s assessment would then inform the letter grade next year. That would be the new letter grade we would own and have to be accountable for.”
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