By LAURA HAMMACK, guest columnist
In my last column, I presented some troubling data points for our school community.
To briefly summarize, our current student enrollment is down 100 students as compared with last school year. Since the majority of school district funding comes from the number of students enrolled, our school district will need to deploy another round of budget reduction to align our expenditures to revenues received.
Unfortunately, our school district has witnessed a declining enrollment since the 2006-2007 school year when enrollment in Brown County Schools was 2,272 students. This school year, our enrollment is 1,667 students, which evidences a reduction of 605 students in 14 years — a 27 percent decline.
This school year marks the beginning of my fifth year as superintendent. Over the past four years, we recognized that the enrollment trend was going to continue when we began to explore the population demographic change across the entirety of Brown County. Because of this, we have taken significant steps to maintain cash balances that were rapidly decreasing by reducing over $2.25 million in expenditures.
None of these reductions have been easy; however, they were necessary. The next round of budget modifications will be even more challenging and will require truly innovative problem solving. We intend to dig deeply over the remainder of this school year to analyze data and work collaboratively with the community to deploy a system for budget modification that responsibly positions the school district for forecast student enrollment.
In my last column, I shared an “ah-ha” from a recent dive into demographic trend data for the county. Since 2000, the county population of preschool aged students dropped 23.4 percent, school-aged students dropped 25.7 percent, and the population of child-rearing-aged adults dropped 28.8 percent. Interestingly, the reduction in student enrollment over the same period of time was 27 percent. This is an almost perfect alignment with the countywide demographic data trends.
We know that a demographic data point for a vibrant and thriving community is when the population of preschool/school-aged children and child-rearing-aged adults is maintained or grows. It is deeply troubling to witness the vanishing of one-quarter of these vital populations over the past 20 years.
The schools are working to advance world class educational and extracurricular programming so that families choose this county to live, raise a family, and educate their children. Over the past four years, I have held many conversations with young families who share with me that they would love to live in Brown County; however, they simply can’t afford to live here.
The Indiana Uplands Regional Housing Study was recently published by Regional Opportunity Initiatives (ROI). This study provides a comprehensive analysis of housing issues across the 11-county Indiana Uplands region, of which Brown County is a member. This report provides a fascinating analysis, and I encourage our readers to review the report in its entirety on the Regional Opportunity Initiatives Inc. website. For now, I believe a few data points highlighted in this study are important to better understand our population demographic concerns.
The report states, “According to the U.S. Government, households spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing are considered cost-burdened.” It goes on to indicate that “51 percent of Brown County households living in rental housing spend more than 30 percent of their income on gross rent.” And, “The high percent of rent-burdened residents is a result of low inventory of rental property within Brown County, driving costs for rental units higher along with competition with season rentals.”
The study concludes that Brown County rental rates are the second-highest in the Uplands region, behind Monroe County. Additionally, median home values are the highest in the region. As such, the report states, “A program focused on adding non-seasonal units and increasing the supply of affordable year-round rental units will help ensure the housing market remains healthy.”
I am no housing specialist, but this analysis makes sense to me. And while I know the outcome is extremely complicated to realize, I have to believe that more affordable housing units for young families with starting incomes will inspire a positive shift in our demographic deficits.
The Uplands Housing study evidences a current deficit of nearly 1,000 units needed to meet the needs of lower income households in Brown County. If half of those units had one or two school-aged children in residence, our school enrollment decline is erased.
We recognize that solving the housing issues in Brown County expands beyond the addition of lower-income rental housing for young families. The schools sincerely appreciate the housing conversations that have already taken place across the county and are anxious to witness outcomes with impact.
We believe the call for action has never been greater.
Laura Hammack is superintendent of Brown County schools. She can be reached at 812-988-6601 or [email protected].
