CCSD Enrollment

RISON - The Cleveland County School District began the 2022-23 school year on Monday with the same number of students on campus as their last average daily membership indicated, 691. Superintendent Craig Dupuy said the district closed out the 2021-22 school year in May with 702 on campus. “I was re‐ally hoping to be at that 702 or above mark,” he said Tuesday. Based on Tuesday’s atten‐dance figures, Dupuy said Rison Elementary reported 340 at school for grades kindergarten through 6th while Rison High School had 351 on campus in grades 7th through 12th. While those figures were lower than what Dupuy said he had hoped for, they were still better than what the school dis‐trict began last year with. On the first day of 2021-22 school year, Rison Elementary had 312 in at‐tendance while Rison High School had 319 for total of 631. Dupuy did note that the district had not heard from about 15 stu‐dents who were on class rolls at the end of the last school who were expected to be back this year. As of Tuesday afternoon, he said the district had not re‐ceived any requests from other school districts for the records of those students, which indicates the students could have simply been absent on the first day of school. School enrollment has a direct impact on school funding in Ar‐kansas. The Arkansas Depart‐ment of Education provides what is called “foundation fund‐ing” for each student enrolled in the district. The total amount of foundation funding received by a school district is based on the average daily enrollment over the first three quarters of the pre‐vious school year: the more stu‐dents, the more money the dis‐trict receives. Dupuy said the Cleveland County School District saw its foundation money increase from $7,182 per student last year to $7,413 this year due to its partic‐ipation in the Teachers Salary Equalization Fund. School districts that met the $3...