District 99 Won't Fire Any Teachers Despite Declining Student Enrollment: Superintendent

Downers Grove High School School District 99 will continue to employ the same amount of teachers next year despite a downward trend in enrollment numbers, My Suburban Life reported.

A study of the district’s enrollment information is conducted every five to six years, Hank Thiele, the district’s superintendent, told My Suburban Life. The district generally employs analyst John Kasarda for the job, and he provides a projection based on elementary and middle school enrollments, housing construction, births, death rates and other factors.

Thiele said it was time for a new report when he and other faculty started to see a continuous drop in enrollment at the district’s schools.

“We were starting to notice that there was a widening gap between the prior Kasarda projections and our actual enrollment,” he said. “It started to look like the right time.”

The district’s enrollment hasn’t been at an all-time high since 2008, when it peaked at more than 5,400 students. Since then, there has been a steady decline. The district’s 2011 report projected 5,207 students would be enrolled by 2017, but a recent revision of those numbers toned down the figure to 4,927.

“That’s a pretty significant number,” Pete Theis, the district’s assistant superintendent of human resources, told My Suburban Life. “And for us as we look at maximizing our resources it again points out why this was so important for us to take a look at new information.”

Kasarda reportedly has projected another spike in enrollment, but not until the 2020-21 school year. His projection estimates just under 5,000 students enrolled that year.

Thiele said that although the teacher-to-student ratio is staying the same in spite of the declining number of students in district schools, he doesn’t plan on letting any teachers go.

The district is expecting around 13 retirements throughout the next few years, he said, which takes care of the monetary problem for him. Throughout the next two years, each school department is expected to lose at least one teacher to retirement.

“It does mean less instructional positions, but it doesn’t mean it will impact anybody currently employed,” Thiele said.

The school board is expected to vote on a final teacher-to-student ratio at a meeting Jan. 23.

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