Over the past decade, St. Charles District 303 has been losing enrollment district-wide despite multiple attempts at boundary changes and school closures. In recent years, D303 has been faced yet again with decreasing enrollment, this time primarily seen in the high school grade levels.
According to the Illinois State Board of Education, D303 was ranked 18th in enrollment with 11,782 students during the 2021-2022 school year. However, this year, D303 student enrollment has decreased by 1.7 percent with 11,572 students. The biggest decrease took place predominantly in high school enrollment, from 4,000 students in 2021-2022 to 3,798 students this year.
During the 2023-2024 school year, the D303 school board discussed boundary changes affecting all elementary schools, middle schools and high schools in an attempt to even out the distribution of the existing student population. The school board ended up sending out a survey to the public of what boundary plan they prefer, and voters ended up choosing to leave the current boundaries in place.
In 2018, the district also struggled with a drop in student enrollment numbers with elementary schools. Ultimately, the D303 school board decided to close Fox Ridge Elementary School as its capacity was only at 69 percent.
When asked about the enrollment numbers this year compared to the past, Principal Jim Richter said, “When I became principal in 2018, we had about 2,550 students. Now, we have about 1,830, which translates to about 100 students less per year.”
So how does this affect STCE students? “With more students, we would typically have more sections of classes available, which helped to create less scheduling conflicts for students since we would have more sections of each class and/or would have more interest in classes that would allow us to not have to consider canceling them,” Richter mentioned. “So now, with just over 1,800 students, we might not have as many classes of, let’s say, AP English Literature, so it might only be available one to two periods a day. If that conflicts with another class a student wants to take, they would have to make a choice as to which one they would want.”
With multiple failed boundary change attempts, it is unclear what the next steps will be from the district to increase enrollment. In the meantime, students can expect to possibly have schedule conflicts within the next few years if enrollment numbers keep declining.
