The Bobcat Nation

Here is an iteresting link that shows school size by enrollment. Billings West is the largest in the state with 1,914 kids and Whitewater the smallest with just 13 kids.

[uhttp://www.mhsa.org/Enrollment/2010-11FallEnro ... Size.pdfrl][/url]

Hope this link works. If not some one can fix it.

Here's the link:
http://www.mhsa.org/Enrollment/2010-11F ... BySize.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Always interesting stuff to look at. Also going to be interesting how a lot of small schools handle the current decline in Montana of graduating high school students. I think the state is down roughly 300 graduating seniors compared to last year and projecting to be down another 200+ next year.

coachouert wrote:Here's the link:
http://www.mhsa.org/Enrollment/2010-11F ... BySize.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Always interesting stuff to look at. Also going to be interesting how a lot of small schools handle the current decline in Montana of graduating high school students. I think the state is down roughly 300 graduating seniors compared to last year and projecting to be down another 200+ next year.

Thanks Coach, i knew someone could upload the link.

stevo wrote:

coachouert wrote:Here's the link:
http://www.mhsa.org/Enrollment/2010-11F ... BySize.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Always interesting stuff to look at. Also going to be interesting how a lot of small schools handle the current decline in Montana of graduating high school students. I think the state is down roughly 300 graduating seniors compared to last year and projecting to be down another 200+ next year.

Thanks Coach, i knew someone could upload the link.

No problem. In the future, you can just copy and paste the link into your post and it will show up correctly. You don't need to underline or anything like that.

Although it's a political hot potato, when I see numbers like these, it sure seems to me as if we have too many school districts in the state. I simply cannot imagine any other scenario than one where we'll only see more and more consolidation in the future.

Of course, I'm also of the opinion that we have too many counties in this state if you look at the population and size of some of them at this point. I'm a proponent for not being held hostage to history and the political climate when they were orginally drawn up.

And while I'm at it, I'll throw one more out there--we have too many public 4-year colleges in the state--I can think of one right off the bat given it's relative close geographic location to 3 other schools, it's lack of unique offerings that aren't duplicated elsewhere, that really should be turned into a 2-year junior college.

Fort Benton will have 89 kids in HS this fall. I still remember my 7th grade class in FortBenton had 76 kids. 76 in one class to 89 in the entire school. That is quite a drop!!

Winifred's class of 1997 had 22 kids, the largest in 75 years of exisitence. Now the enrollment is 21. Maybe its just me but 1997 doesn't seem that long ago and other classes had larger enrollments as well. Think the high school was 63 at the time.

I was told that in the mid 80's (roughly 1985) Fergus had 550 kids and St. Leo's Catholic in Lewistown had another 125. Now St. Leo's is closed and Fergus has 378 (and that will be lower this year I believe). That is a loss of about 10 kids per year over the last 26 years.

I agree with the poster above regarding consolidation, but it is definitely a political hot potato.

I know this isn't about High School numbers, but here in bozeman they have, I think , 600 more elementary school students than they thought for this year. They sent out a letter saying they can't tell you where your kid will go to school until about the 22nd because they have to figure out how many kids will be going. That just shows you how much some areas of the state are growing, or how many small town people are moving into the bigger areas.

SACCAT wrote:I know this isn't about High School numbers, but here in bozeman they have, I think , 600 more elementary school students than they thought for this year. They sent out a letter saying they can't tell you where your kid will go to school until about the 22nd because they have to figure out how many kids will be going. That just shows you how much some areas of the state are growing, or how many small town people are moving into the bigger areas.

as a father of three, in which the older two are in hawthorne and the youngest is supposed to start kindergarten in a couple weeks.....i was very annoyed to hear this! it is going to be a very difficult time in my house if i have to send him to another school. wish me luck!

Billings Cat wrote:Although it's a political hot potato, when I see numbers like these, it sure seems to me as if we have too many school districts in the state. I simply cannot imagine any other scenario than one where we'll only see more and more consolidation in the future.

Of course, I'm also of the opinion that we have too many counties in this state if you look at the population and size of some of them at this point. I'm a proponent for not being held hostage to history and the political climate when they were orginally drawn up.

And while I'm at it, I'll throw one more out there--we have too many public 4-year colleges in the state--I can think of one right off the bat given it's relative close geographic location to 3 other schools, it's lack of unique offerings that aren't duplicated elsewhere, that really should be turned into a 2-year junior college.

There certainly are a lot of schools consolidating (especially along the hi-line, where they are relatively close together), and I suspect a couple of those near the bottom of the list won't be around much longer. But in many instances, these schools are 30 to 40 miles away from their next closest school, so closing the school really isn't a practical option. Take Winifred, for instance ... if you closed the school there, kids would need to bus up to 60 miles one way each day to school. That's just not something that makes much sense. So for many of these schools, they just need to keep going and hope for better numbers in future years (which, fortunately, Winifred will see).

As for the colleges ... yeah, there certainly are a whole lot of them for the population of the state. Could probably find a lot of efficiencies really quickly by changing that.

bcats wrote:Winifred's class of 1997 had 22 kids, the largest in 75 years of exisitence. Now the enrollment is 21. Maybe its just me but 1997 doesn't seem that long ago and other classes had larger enrollments as well. Think the high school was 63 at the time.

Let's get to work on creating some new businesses up there so some more of the kids from those big classes can move back and raising their kids there ... sound like a plan?

gtapp wrote:Fort Benton will have 89 kids in HS this fall. I still remember my 7th grade class in FortBenton had 76 kids. 76 in one class to 89 in the entire school. That is quite a drop!!

Tractors got bigger and one guy could farm a lot more land. That seems to be the general theme.

bcats wrote:Winifred's class of 1997 had 22 kids, the largest in 75 years of exisitence. Now the enrollment is 21. Maybe its just me but 1997 doesn't seem that long ago and other classes had larger enrollments as well. Think the high school was 63 at the time.

We had a class of 5 in 1990, and our school only had about 24 at one point (my sophomore year, probably). So there has been a lot of ebb and flow over time.

I credit the demise of my hometown (Opheim) to NASA. See if you can figure that one out.

What the heck do they have for breakfast in Drummond (School pop. 79) that allows them to turn out so many quality college football players?? Hire their coach, I say!!!!

mr leslie wrote:What the heck do they have for breakfast in Drummond (School pop. 79) that allows them to turn out so many quality college football players?? Hire their coach, I say!!!!

Must be some pretty stout bloodlines in that school district. It really has been amazing.

Cat-theotherwhitemeat wrote:I credit the demise of my hometown (Opheim) to NASA. See if you can figure that one out.

The closing of St. Marie Air Force Base and the #3 spot to land a space shuttle...

Or it could be Opheim is just way to damn cold in the winter.

The Butcher wrote:

Cat-theotherwhitemeat wrote:I credit the demise of my hometown (Opheim) to NASA. See if you can figure that one out.

The closing of St. Marie Air Force Base and the #3 spot to land a space shuttle...

Or it could be Opheim is just way to damn cold in the winter.

St Marie is too far to have much of an effect on Opheim, but the Radar Base a few miles out of town had quite a few people at one time.
The Radar Bases (Lewistown had one too) were closed when satellites became the early warning system of choice

good to see you back CTOWM

cats2506 wrote:

The Butcher wrote:

Cat-theotherwhitemeat wrote:I credit the demise of my hometown (Opheim) to NASA. See if you can figure that one out.

The closing of St. Marie Air Force Base and the #3 spot to land a space shuttle...

Or it could be Opheim is just way to damn cold in the winter.

St Marie is too far to have much of an effect on Opheim, but the Radar Base a few miles out of town had quite a few people at one time.
The Radar Bases (Lewistown had one too) were closed when satellites became the early warning system of choice

good to see you back CTOWM

That is exactly correct! Damn satalites! My class in 6th grade had 32. The whole high school is 2/3 of that now. I ended up graduating with 16 which isn't all that bad. When doing my resume, top 16 in my high school class sounds better than top 32.

And good to be back. I hope you are doing well.