Where did the students go?
Gallup enrollment down 600 from the beginning of the school year

By Bill Donovan
Staff Writer

GALLUP — Officials for the local school district are trying to solve the mystery of what has happened to several hundred missing students in the district.

They were here at one time - the Gallup McKinley County School District had more than 14,000 students a few years ago. But five years of decline has resulted in that number slowly going down.

On the 80th day of the school year, the district's enrollment was 12,978. That's down from the 13,189 students that the district was teaching on the 40th day of the school year.

School officials are wondering why the district isn't growing and what can be done about it, especially since this decrease in enrollment is costing the district hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in lost revenue from the state.

Dr. Bruce Tempest, one of the school board members, says that the answer may be found in birth rate figures for the county. That's been going down for the past few years.

School board members also think that the situation can be improved by looking at the reasons why students have withdrawn between the 40th and 80th day of the school year.

During that period more than 400 students enrolled in classes in the district but more than 600 withdrew, which caused the enrollment figures to go down by 211 students.

The biggest reason for withdrawals - 238 - is because families moved out of the district.

A total of 46 students were expelled for one reason or another, Some of these students may be coming back in before the end of the school year.

Another six were expelled because of excessive absences - more than 10 in one year. Seven decided to opt out of the school system altogether and go the home schooling route.

Another 19 dropped out because of personal reasons, five decided to go ahead and get their GEDs and two dropped out because of illness. There was one death during that 40 day period.

Seventeen students at Gallup Central High dropped out because of conflicts with their work schedule or lack of interest.

School officials said most of these are adults in the 30s and 40s who decided to make an attempt at getting their high school diplomas only to discover, for one reason or another, it was harder than they expected.

Another possibility that has been brought up is whether local non-public schools like Gallup Catholic and Rehoboth are experiencing an increase and whether this could contribute to the public district's decrease.

School officials said they had no figures to either substantiate or dispute this.