Many rural school districts struggling with declining elementary school enrollments will soon face the more complex problems of declining high school enrollment. School districts with only one high school do not have the option of consolidation and must find innovative solutions to the problem of maintaining educational quality with dwindling…

This speech reviews the literature on school closings in the context of declining economic support. Declining school enrollment, coupled with declining funds (fiscal retrenchment), makes school district reform necessary. A school district in Seattle, Washington took approximately a decade to resolve these problems. A district planning commission's…

While it is not the intent of the paper to portray the rural school jurisdictions as completely riven and incapacitated by conflicting interests, a very strong implication emerging from studies of these school systems is that "integrative" management policies and strategies are needed to counteract the fragmentation which has been…

The two factors of live births and migration constitute the major determinants of the size and composition of the population for the provinces as well as for Canada as a whole. The decline in fertility has almost exactly offset the increase in the number of young women in the child-bearing age groups. The effective length of the reproductive…

This method of determining which elementary school to close involves the identification of a number of factors to be considered and the weighting of those factors according to importance. It involves five steps: establishing a precise reason or purpose for school closing, selecting factors to quantify this purpose, deciding on a weighting scheme…

This newsletter describes the role of principals in managing the effects of declining enrollment. Suggestions are provided regarding the decision-making process, staff reassignment, student transfer, curriculum modification, disposition of equipment and materials, and how to deal with parent and student concerns. The experiences of five school…

Chapter 2 in a book on school law discusses the reasons for reduction in force (RIF) and presents a set of model regulations for school districts as the best means of minimizing legal problems resulting from RIF. The reasons for RIF include declining student enrollments; reduced turnover among teachers; changes in programs; and more constrained…

The current period of enrollment decline offers school districts an ideal opportunity for program and facility reevaluation and long-range planning. Any long-range plan should evaluate current programs in light of statutory and educational trends, estimate existing facilities' ability to accommodate change, determine the community's potential…

A new goal for corporate giving to higher education has emerged. It is to increase the amount of giving to the institution each year by at least the amount of inflation. Both inflation and dangerous demographics will threaten higher education excessively in the coming decade. The demographic picture will vary greatly by geographic region, and the…

Arguing that the decline in the number of community college students transferring to four-year colleges could have a more dramatic effect on baccalaureate-granting institutions than the projected drop in the number of high school graduates, this paper traces the history of the community college's transfer function and discusses the implications of…

Colleges and universities can expect a decrease in the number of incoming freshmen. However, increased retention can compensate somewhat for the predictable decrease in enrollment. As a result, it becomes important to measure student satisfaction with the student's chosen college. This article, therefore, presents a "Pupil Pleasure Poll" to be…

Enrollment in the Los Angeles Community Colleges in fall 1978 dropped to 124,523, a 3.7% decrease from fall 1977. Instructional Television and West Los Angeles College showed the only increases, although the increase at West (and the decrease at Trade-Technical College) were related to the administrative tranfer of the Airport Center from Trade to…

The objective of this study is to show results obtained by computing teacher salaries three different ways and to show the implications of these for practice. Conventional ways of calculating teacher salaries show declines in salaries once inflation has been considered. Following people who remain in the profession, however, shows that salaries…

Since 1975, Ontario teacher negotiators have focused attention on conditions-of-employment clauses. This paper focuses on those clauses that have direct or indirect cost implications for school boards as enrollments decline. These clauses concern such issues as pupil-teacher ratios, class size, and job protection. Information for the analysis was…

A discussion of the economics of higher education begins with an outline of the history of higher education, and a profile of American postsecondary institutions in the recent past and the present. An analysis of the outlook for enrollments follows. Data are given on enrollment trends since 1951, according to sector (public versus private),…