Nonresidents hoping to send their children to Griffith Public Schools are going to have to wait a year before the subject comes up again.
The Griffith Public Schools Board voted 5-0 to suspend open enrollment for the 2017-2018 school year during its meeting Thursday. School board members cited growth in resident students as the catalyst for suspending the enrollment, though they acknowledged they may have to revisit the idea soon because of finances.
“I’m fine with tabling it for one year,” member Ray White said before the vote. “But with the (property tax) circuit breaker, we’re going to lose money and when that happens, there’s going to be cuts, and that’s not what people want to hear.”
The school district opened its doors to outside communities for the 2015-16 and 2016-17 school years, and there are currently 103 students spread over K through 12 in the district. Those students, as well as their siblings, are grandfathered in and can continue in the district, as can children of GPS employees already enrolled, School Board President Gary Sutton said.
Sutton said the district saw an increase in residential students coincide with the two years of open enrollment, including an enrollment of 96 kindergarten students for next year. The district, he said, hasn’t seen that type of growth in 20 years.
“I credit the town’s leaders with creating a cool little town where people want to be,” he said. “We also had 80 students, give or take, enroll over the last two years, and if we get a third year (of increased enrollment), I’m comfortable with calling it a trend.”
Sutton praised the administration for its thorough presentation during the board’s March meeting breaking down the statistics of how open enrollment has affected GPS. During that meeting, the board and attendees learned that open enrollment students are less of a disciplinary issue than resident students and that open enrollment students scored better on ISTEP tests in English and math – 70.6 percent versus 64.5 percent in English and 70.6 percent versus 61.9 percent in math during the 2015-2016 test cycle.
The 103 open enrollment students also brought $608,000 to the district, which was a welcome cash infusion, according to GPS Finance Director George Jerome. Of those 103 students, 46 percent of them come from the adjacent Lake Ridge district, 17 percent from Gary, 13 percent from Hammond and 11 percent from Merrillville.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
