City schools report enrollment growth
By Staff
Kim West
Despite a grim forecast for next year's state education budget, Russellville City Schools board members heard some positive numbers at their monthly meeting Thursday.
All four schools in the city system reported higher enrollment numbers, with 56 more students since last spring now attending Russellville High School, Russellville Middle School, Russellville Elementary and West Elementary for a total of 2,434 students.
There are 676 students in grades 9-12 at RHS, while West Elementary has 605 students in grades K-2. RES has 597 third, fourth and fifth graders, and RMS has 556 students in sixth through eighth grades.
"It's always good to have higher enrollment numbers but especially during a time when there's a bleak financial forecast for the state," said superintendent Dr. Wayne Ray. "With proration, we would have to raise the divisions, which means there's less teaching units. If there are no reserves (in our budget), that means we have to lay off teachers.
"That's why it's so important to have local funds to put us in a better position than systems that don't have that option of local funding."
Ray also reported high scores for Alabama Direct Assessment of Writing tests taken by the city's fifth, seventh and tenth graders last spring. Russellville's fifth grade test scores ranked seventh in the state, while seventh graders finished 15th overall and tenth graders placed in the top 20. By comparison, fifth and seventh graders in the Muscle Shoals school system finished sixth and 18th, respectively, while its tenth graders tied with sophomores at Russellville.
"Muscle Shoals has a great school system, and we're an academic rival with Muscle Shoals," Ray said. "These test scores tell us that our teachers are working extremely hard, and we're very proud of that."
In other business, the board approved:
The next school board work session and budget hearing will be Sept. 17, while the monthly meeting is scheduled for Sept. 18. Both meetings, which were moved forward one week due to the budget deadline, will be held at 3:30 p.m.
