Enrollment in Lovell schools rebounds by 18

Enrollment in Big Horn County School District No. 2 has rebounded a bit this fall compared to 2023-24, but numbers are still down compared to September of 2021 and 2022, Supt. Doug Hazen reported last week.

District enrollment, including the preschool program started a year ago, is up 18 students from 725 in the fall of 2023 to the current number of 743. Without the preschool numbers, enrollment is up 16 students from a year ago at 715, though down from 738 students in 2021 and 731 students in 2022. Enrollment in the fall of 2020 was 742, showing an overall downward trend with a bit of a bounce-back this year.

Hazen said the uptick could be as simple as some new families moving into the community.

“I don’t know that there’s anything specific with 16 kids – a couple families and maybe a variety of other reasons,” Hazen said. “We do feel fortunate, I would say. Generally, the narrative across the state is that there’s a continuing trend of decreasing enrollment, so we’re vigilant on that. So I’d say, again, that we feel fortunate to be back up above 700 brick and mortar, K-12.”

With District One superintendent Matt Davidson stating in an earlier interview that the Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Education Committee recently reported a decline in the state’s student population by 20 percent since 2015, Hazen agreed.

“We’ve heard the same things, that there’s decreasing enrollment across the state, and birth rates are down,” he said. “A year or two ago as we got the state facilities commission trend data estimating what our enrollment is going to look like in the next five, seven or 10 years for what we need for buildings and size and all that, their projections were not good, that we’d end up in the 500s in the next five to 10 years. So that’s why a little bit of a bump back into the 700s is good, because otherwise we went 738, 731, 699. If we’d gone to 680 or something, we’d be right on that (downward) track.”

Hazen said he was glad to see the pre-K enrollment grow from 26 to 28, but he said the preschool enrollment is capped at 30 students.

“It seems as though we’re filling the right gap with Head Start closing,” he said. “Saying that we can do about 30, I hope is hitting the right mark where we’re getting 25 to 30 kids. With CRC (Children’s Resource Center) and the daycares, between all of the entities in the community, I think we’re able to provide that option to every family and kind of hit the right balance.”

The numbers

Not including the preschool, enrollment in Lovell Elementary School has gone from 344 in 2021 to 308 in 2022 with a huge fifth-grade class moving to middle school, then to 289 in 2023 (315 with preschool) and 308 this year (336 with preschool).

The middle school went from 175 in 2021 to 187 in 2022, 189 in 2023 and 174 in 2024. And the high school enrollment moved from 219 students in 2021 to 236 in 2022, 221 in 2023 and 233 this year.

Current numbers are 28 in preschool, 50 in kindergarten, 45 in first grade, 52 in second grade, 47 in third grade, 48 in fourth grade and 66 in fifth grade. In the middle school there are 47 students in sixth grade, 52 in seventh grade and 75 in eighth grade.

At LHS, there are 60 freshmen, 53 sophomores, 63 juniors and 57 seniors, up from 48 last year.