Friday, February 23, 2007

It's 2007, Do You Know Where Your Students Are?

I contacted Racine Unified about ten days ago seeking some demographic information in the hopes that I could introduce some facts to the Caledonia seccession debate. Among the information that I need for my analysis is the number of RUSD eligible students from Caledonia and Racine who do not attend RUSD schools. However, Unified does not have this information.

I find this fascinating. By some estimates, 60% of Caledonia schoolchildren do not attend Unified schools. Now I would think that if the mission of RUSD was to educate children, they might need to know that huge numbers of people are balking at a pre-paid (as opposed to free) education. And more importantly, RUSD might want to know just why these people have chosen to forgo the pre-paid education, so that they could address their concerns if possible.

Or maybe it isn't Caledonia students they want, only Caledonia dollars.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

interesting....

Brenda said...

Denis,

Do you really believe that the RUSD administration doesn't know the number?

I'll buy they do not know the exact number (that do not attend) but I can guarantee you that they know the number that DO attend! They can certainly estimate from that number that less than half of the children in Caledonia attend RUSD.

(In case you were wondering that number is approximately 2200 students, this is the number directly from the financial department of RUSD)

Denis Navratil said...

Thanks Brenda. Central office personel apparently need more time to come up with the figures that I asked of them.