Continued growth in enrollment at South Ridge and Cherry helped push total enrollment higher in the St. Louis County School District this year compared to last year. Based on initial enrollment figures from mid-September, a total of 1,958 students showed up for the start of the school year, an increase of 60 over the same period last year. And while the numbers may fluctuate and come down, something to be expected Business Manager Kim Johnson said, it is a good sign for the schools.

The growth is limited to the southern portion of the school district, with Cherry experiencing the biggest jump, from 499 last September to 537 this year. South Ridge also saw gains, with 564 students showing up this year, compared to 539 at the same time last year.

Enrollment in the sprawling northern portion of the district, meanwhile, was flat, with initial enrollments nearly identical to last year. North Woods reported 543 students, down one from 2017, while Northeast Range slipped by two students. Tower-Soudan Elementary, meanwhile, saw 67 students, up two over last year.

“The trend being high is really promising,” Johnson said.

While the enrollment increase is limited to the southern part of the district, the added revenue will benefit all the schools, according to Johnson

Johnson said part of the draw to the district is the rural appeal in the southern portion of the region. Johnson said she speculated that rural families in the Hibbing district were open-enrolling at Cherry because they felt Hibbing couldn’t serve their needs.

In addition, she said, programs offered at one school can be offered at all schools via the district’s implementation of tele-presence technology, allowing students at any campus to sit in on a class at another location, a service not readily available at single-high school campuses in districts like Ely, Virginia and Hibbing.

Revenue calculations

To figure out how much money the school will receive from the state, the district uses a state standard known as Average Daily Membership, or ADM.

The metric judges, on average, how many students across the school year were served by a particular campus. For example, last year Tower-Soudan had an ADM of 66.3. While the actual enrollment may have been higher or lower at any particular point in the year, the score is averaged across those numbers based on monthly headcounts.

ADM is broken down to each individual grade level at each campus.

To estimate what this year’s ADM will be, to formulate the district’s budget, Johnson said she looks at yearly trends in the district and takes the initial headcounts through January to create an estimate of what the final ADM will be six months later.

The preliminary ADM for this year, solely based off of September enrollment is 1,928.6. Total ADM for all of last year came in at 1,866.4 students.