Lawrence Public Schools gained five students through open enrollment but lost at least 20 more to the three districts closest to the city.

That’s likely a low number because the Eudora school district didn’t share a count of how many of its 50-some transfers came from Lawrence.

It’s the first active year of Kansas’ open enrollment law, giving public school students statewide the ability to transfer to any district in the state as long as space allows. 

Passed by the Kansas Legislature in 2022, the law has both peaked interest and raised concerns. Proponents believe it can help families enter districts that may be more in line with their needs or desires; skeptics have said it can hinder equity and that it’s an imposition on local control.

Lawrence had 102 open seats for nonresident transfers this year. Space varied at individual school buildings and grades. Some schools had no seats open.

The five students who came to Lawrence previously attended McLouth, Topeka, Perry-Lecompton and Eudora school districts, according to Lawrence school district spokesperson Julie Boyle. 

Lawrence serves approximately 11,000 students across 11 elementary, four middle and two high schools in addition to virtual school and other programs. It’s within the top 10 largest districts in Kansas.

Boyle said the district does not currently have a process in place to track students who exited the district under open enrollment. She did not respond by publication time to questions about transfer data from previous school years or whether the district was considering creating a process to track exits next year.

The open enrollment law applies only to cross-district transfers, not building-to-building transfers within the same district. Districts are mandated to admit all applicants if there’s enough room.

But state funding follows transfer students to their new districts, which can incentivize districts to attract outside students in.

Superintendent Josh Woodward said the additional funding has been one of a few benefits for the Perry-Lecompton school district.

“More importantly, we’ve had some pretty neat students join our school district,” Woodward said via email. “I also believe it is a benefit to our non-residential families who no longer need to submit an annual application.”

Perry-Lecompton had 224 open seats, and 31 nonresident students transferred in, Woodward said.

The majority of those transfers – 17 – previously attended the Lawrence school district, he said; others came from Topeka, Seaman, Shawnee Heights and other districts.

Woodward said the district did not track open enrollment exits but that “I know we had some. That is pretty normal for all districts.”

Perry-Lecompton serves around 800 students in one elementary, one middle and one high school.

The Baldwin City school district set a lower number of available seats for nonresident students: 24.

Superintendent Mark Dodge said five students transferred to Baldwin City under open enrollment. Three previously attended the Lawrence school district and the others came from Wellsville and Eudora, he said.

Baldwin also tracked open enrollment exits. Five students left to attend Blue Valley, Santa Fe Trail and Ottawa schools, Dodge said. 

The only concern Dodge said the district has identified at this time is with the legal requirement of districts to make nonresident enrollment decisions before opening enrollment up for resident students.

School districts were required to set the number of open seats available for nonresident transfers in each grade at each of their buildings and post information to their websites by May 1 for out-of-district transfer requests to be submitted throughout the month of June. Many school districts, including Lawrence, previously welcomed nonresident transfers using different methods based on availability.

“This makes it challenging to plan for class sizes, because we are estimating space,” Dodge said. “Whereas prior to this legislation, we made decisions regarding nonresident transfers after returning students enrolled, allowing us to make decisions based on known capacities.”

Boyle also identified that requirement as a new challenge for Lawrence. The district compared projected enrollment numbers to full-time equivalent (FTE) assignments at each building to calculate capacity numbers, which the board approved during a meeting in April. In that meeting, the board also approved lower student-to-teacher classroom ratios than the previous year.

Eudora is a much smaller school district than Lawrence but, according to Superintendent Stu Moeckel, had about 50 nonresident student transfers under open enrollment this year. He did not provide data on which districts the incoming students previously attended.

Eudora, which serves around 1,700 students across one elementary, one middle and one high school, had 261 open seats with varying class availability.

The number of new students and the number of exits seemingly canceled each other out, but Moeckel said that’s likely unrelated to the new transfer policy.

“Exits are a bit harder to determine because we’re not asking exactly why they’re leaving,” Moeckel said via email. “We had about 50 to 70 kids leave over the summer but any of these could just be typical exits and have nothing to do with the open enrollment changes.”

Across the state, there were only a small number of open enrollment transfers in this inaugural year. The Kansas Reflector reported in November that approximately 1,500 students — 6% of all transfers — transferred districts under the new law. 

Other midsized districts, such as Andover, Derby and Emporia, had more than 100 nonresident students transferring in under open enrollment — the highest numbers recorded in the state, according to the Reflector.

More information about open enrollment in Lawrence Public Schools is available on the district’s website, usd497.org/Domain/10475. 

Maya Hodison (she/her), equity reporter, can be reached at mhodison@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.

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