Cave Creek Unified and the Enrollment Elephant in the Room

With the recent governing board election, the current board members continued to pat themselves on their collective backs about the great job they are doing in such tough economic times.

What they are hiding is the fact that Cave Creek Unified continues to be a district in decline (losing more than 200 students this year alone).

The evidence of this decline is found in the enrollment population capture rate.  The capture rate is simply the district enrollment as a percentage of the total school age population within the district boundaries.  According to Applied Economics, the district’s demographer, most districts in the metropolitan area have a capture rate of 75 to 80%.  When we look at the figures for Cave Creek Unified we find this (click to enlarge)…

For 2012 the district capture rate is 64.8%, the lowest value in over 12 years, and includes a significant drop from 2011. If you take out the 300 or so open enrollment students the rate is even lower. You can see that the district is failing to capture almost 3000 student of which over 1000 would be attending CCUSD if the capture rate was comparable to other districts.

So it is clear that all the policies, programs, and governing board members over the past 12 years have done nothing to stop the decline of the district. 

Sure our students have “world languages”, can use iPads in the classroom, experience differentiated instruction and flipped classrooms, but this window dressing has done little to stop the outflow of families voting with their feet.  Parents do not want this windows dressing, they want real substance so our children will be able to compete globally.  Other schools and districts are providing it so they are leaving.

The district administrators and governing board members should be ashamed at this, but we know they will continue to ignore the enrollment elephant.

Need more evidence? Every red dot in the area bounded in gray at the top is a family living in CCUSD but attending a Scottsdale Unified school.

Source: Scottsdale Unified Governing Board Presentation 10/9/12