Kansas school districts have shown caution in allowing transfers through a new open enrollment option that allows students to attend school outside their home district, data presented to the Kansas State Board of Education showed Wednesday.

About 1,500 students transferred out of their home district under the new law for the 2024-2025 school year, representing just 6 percent of all district transfers, according to data from the Kansas State Department of Education.

Interdistrict transfers have been allowed for years through various methods, and even with the new law, the total number of students who transferred to a district outside their own generally declined this school year.

The new “school choice” open enrollment option was included in a 2022 education funding bill and required schools to accept out-of-district students if they can accommodate them. Students have the right to remain at their school of choice until graduation if they remain in good standing, and districts must set limits before enrollment deadlines on the number of students they can accept.

Skeptics said the option works against public schools, making it easier for families with the means to access higher-performing schools and widening an already wide gap in public education.

Frank Harwood, deputy education commissioner, said districts appear to be conservatively estimating how many students they could accept in the first year of the new option.

“I think the idea of ​​caution in something new is reasonable,” he said.

Mid-sized school districts, especially those around Wichita, have seen an influx of students due to the new open enrollment policy. Districts like Andover, Derby and Emporia saw the largest numbers, with more than 100 out-of-district students attending each of those districts through the new open enrollment option.

Several districts around Wichita saw an overall net increase due to out-of-district transfers. The Wichita school district, along with Topeka Public Schools, lost the most students to transfers, which include open enrollment and other circumstances. More than 1,200 students transferred from the Wichita district and more than 600 transferred from Topeka Public Schools this school year, according to enrollment data.

The fluctuating district numbers are not new, but they point to underlying problems such as declining birth rates, rural out-migration, and teacher recruitment and retention problems in school districts with declining enrollments.

Ten Kansas public school districts have just 100 students or less. More than 30 districts have fewer than 200 students.

The state’s 50 largest public school districts educate more than 70 percent of K-12 students, while the 50 smallest districts educate about 2 percent of students.

Healy Public Schools in west central Kansas will dissolve at the end of the 2024-2025 school year due to low enrollment. Two students are enrolled in the district this year. This will be the first school district in Kansas to close since the 2010-2011 school year.

“It’s more than numbers,” said Ann Mah, a board member who represents parts of northeast Kansas. “It’s social. It’s the community. It’s all of those things.”

The current school funding formula did not anticipate school districts with fewer than 100 students, state Education Commissioner Randy Watkins said at Wednesday’s board meeting.

“You hit a hundred, you’re probably at an event of not working,” he said.

Public officials have a few options to solve the problem. The state board could add school district size rules to the education department’s accreditation process, Harwood said, or the Legislature could change the funding formula based on district size and provide incentives for districts to consolidate. However, he said, the process of school district reorganization and dissolution has remained largely unchanged over the past 50 years.

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Photo by Adrian Salazar on Unsplash

Story via Kansas Reflector