Here's The Status Of Elmhurst D-205's Enrollment

ELMHURST, IL — In the last year, Elmhurst School District 205's enrollment dropped 1.8 percent. That may be the result of more parents enrolling their children in private school during the pandemic.

As of Sept. 30, the district's enrollment stood at 8,193, down 146 from a year before.

The biggest dive took place at York High School, falling by 86 students, to 2,754, a 3 percent decrease. Meanwhile, middle school enrollment dropped by 50 students, or 2.8 percent, to 1,757. The elementary schools saw nine fewer students, with an enrollment of 3,421. Madison Early Childhood Center decreased by one.

The biggest elementary school, Fischer, continues to grow. Its enrollment is now 548, up from 418 six years ago.

One surprise for officials was that Field Elementary's enrollment dropped by eight in the last year, to 383. Over the summer, the school board, which had already voted to build a new Field, decided to make it even bigger than originally planned. That was because officials expected the school's enrollment to grow.

The numbers were presented at Tuesday's school board meeting.

Member Karen Stuefen said it would have been nice to have the statistics when the board was making decisions about Field Elementary. She said she wanted such information to prevent the district from overbuilding and relying on taxpayers to pay for the excess space.

"We may want to think we're Hinsdale, but we're not economically," Stuefen said. "We have a vast population in this community, and we have to represent all of them. We really need to have data like this to have healthy, good discussions and to make good decisions."

Member Courtenae Trautmann said she knew of middle school families who transferred their children to private schools during remote learning last year. Last year's seventh-graders, she said, may stay in private school through their eighth grade year and then go to York High School.