State Department of Education officials say they’re seeing rapid growth in student populations throughout Delaware.
Just over 1,800 new kids entered the state school system from a variety of backgrounds, which means a nearly $19 million increase to automatic base school funding next year.
Education Secretary Mark Murphy says 1,600 of those students came from private schools, but that’s not the only source.
“We’ve seen students not only come into our public schools, we also saw the increase in the private school population and we saw a larger number of students coming from out of country,” said Murphy.
Home-schooled kids accounted for the majority of the boost in private school enrollees.
Agency officials say it’s the first growth in the non-public education sector since 2004.
Karen Field Rogers works for the Department of Education. She says because of the unexpected influx, the agency will begin keeping closer tabs on overall enrollment.
“For a lot of these districts, we go and check the unit count as of Sept., 30, but we can really start looking [at] kind of what’s happening throughout the year, hopefully to better be able to predict what will be there in September,” Rogers said.
The department’s proposed budget makes up about a third of the governor’s recommended $3.7 billion spending plan.
JFC will continue preliminary hearings into March before finalizing the FY 2015 budget in early June.
