Trego's Mountain Ear

In case anyone was wondering how many children are attending our local schools, we have some answers: ANB, which is a measurement of enrolled students, is done twice per school year, and is what determines a significant component of school funding. It is also publicly available on the OPI’s website.

Overall, total enrollment between Trego, Fortine, Eureka, Yak, McCormick and Libby holds relatively steady, though we can see a distinct drop associated with Fall of 2020-Spring 2021.

We can look a little closer at Trego, Yak and McCormick. Why those three? All three are so small that they do not have an administrator, and instead have that role filled by the county superintendent.

In that comparison, we can see that Yak typically runs the lowest of the three, and that all three experience fairly frequent and significant fluctuations.

Comparing the elementary schools in North Lincoln County involves looking at Fortine, Eureka and Trego enrollments. Overall, we see a slight increase in K-8 enrollments in North county, though they’ve been steady for the past few years. We additionally notice that the Fall 2020 enrollment drop occurred mostly in Eureka.

We can also look at each school individually. First, Trego:

We’ve looked at Trego’s trendline in previous years: Historical School Enrollment, so a longer term trend-line is available. What we see is that Trego Elementary is facing a long-term trend of lowering enrollment.

Fortine: From the ANB Data available, it’s not apparent if the drop that shows represents a trend or not. Fortine has experienced a drop in enrollment over the period we’re looking at.

Eureka: Shows an increase over the time we’re looking at. It doesn’t line up perfectly with the enrollment changes in Trego and Fortine, which implies that there’s something else going on as well (population changes, or fluctuations in homeschool rates likely also contribute).

Yak: Experiences massive enrollment fluctuations. A longer period of data would be necessary to determine a trend. School enrollment in the Yak has been quite low at times.

McCormick: Enrollment Fluctuates significantly, enough that it’s probably a continual budget concern, but it doesn’t necessarily indicate a downward trend. More data needed, but the years we have hold a fairly stable average.

Libby: Not as steady as Eureka, but probably also impacted by different demographic factors.