The Panorama School District’s certified enrollment numbers for this school year did not come as a shock to the school board and administration.
Superintendent Shawn Holloway says the overall number of students served in the district dropped three students to 684. This decrease follows a three student increase in last year’s enrollment, and reflects the district’s gradual decrease trend in the last five years. Holloway says smaller class sizes are entering the elementary school but gradually increase through graduation. Holloway says there’s only so much you can do to try to grow the number of elementary students, “The biggest thing that we try to do since I’ve been superintendent is really get our story out there. Try to sell our story to the general public and do some marketing things and most of that’s been done through social media. But we’re really trying to ramp up positive Facebook stories that are happening in the classroom, push those out through social media and then also through our website just to make that information as available as possible to prospective families and current families.”
Holloway adds that this increased social media presence is to make families feel like they’re more integral to the process of the district. Since this year’s enrollment didn’t show a significant change from the prior year, no major budgetary decisions are expected from the school board.