SMITHFIELD – Johnston County Public Schools reported PreK – 12th grade total enrollment at 37,209 students, on Tuesday, the 10th day of classes for the 2023-24 school term. That number is down 98 students from last year’s Day 10 total of 37,307. And two years ago, enrollment was at 37,592, marking the second year numbers have fallen.
Tenth day enrollment numbers help determine state funding allocations to school districts.
In 2022, the Johnston County School Board received a Growth Needs Update, which included data from NC State University’s Operations Research and Education Labortory (OREd). The report estimated Johnston County Public Schools would grow on average 729 students per year, for the next 10 years.
Many parents are turning to charter and home schools. Charter school enrollment increased 19 percent from 2019 to 2022 in North Carolina, according to the NC Department of Public Instruction. That’s the fifth highest growth rate among all 50 states.
We reached out to Johnston County Public Schools on Wednesday for a comment about the decline in enrollment. So far, we have not received a response.
Public schools, and joco is no exception, are an epic disaster. Kids go in loving to learn and leave hateful, lazy, and unsure what their private parts indicate.
That’s bullcrap. They become that way staring at their phones, chatting with friends all night all while their parents ignore them. 99% of teachers bust their a$$ to help students learn while dealing with a$$hl parents, entitled kids, and disruptive behavior due to your incompetence as parents. Stop blaming the school for your families inability to be respectful, hard working and willing to learn.
Yeah we homeschool so my kids are doing great. Nothing like your foul mouthed self
Great according to you. Weird according to the rest of society. No need to lie, you don’t do much of anything. Your kids will be more than welcomed as employees of the fast food industry when they grow up.
Thanks for proving my point Jess! I love everyone, and treat fast food workers w respect. I don’t insult them or their honest hard work. The last thing i want is bitter arrogant kids who talk like you just chose to.
I love the fact you blame parents when the schools have the kids more awake hours than parents do. This is how the schools are able to indoctrinate the kids so easily.
Reality is both parents and teachers/schools need to be held responsible to foster learning in the kids. As well the kids need to take responsibility and be held responsible for their actions.
My dtr experienced bad teachers during her 6 years in the schools. 1 teacher didn’t give a crap about boys putting their hands up her shorts, didn’t believe test scores indicated the need for advanced teaching, didn’t think bullying was real. Another teacher was so completely disorganized her room looked like a bomb hit it and then tried to tell me my dtr had ADHD. A third teacher had absolutely no classroom management skills and the kids ran the class. That’s 3/6 teachers that were bad. Her best teachers were unfortunately the year Covid chaos happened and she didn’t get the full year to benefit from them. No we homeschool so no more issues with bad teachers!
Another nonsensical, baseless post by “Jen R”. Who knew that NC teachers weren’t required to teach state standards and were instead “indoctrinating” students…according to Jen. Because she says so. We should pay them less and bash teachers constantly. That’ll improve quality for sure. It’s laughable that you claim that schools have kids more hours than parents and it takes some creative counting of hours to pretend that. The school day is 7 hours per day, 180 days per year, and individual teachers have your precious kid for one hour or so once they hit middle school. Just nonsense.
Less students and they ask for more money……interesting
Yes, but not surprising. We obviously need another 8-figure bond to build another deluxe school in an inconvenient location.
Do you think needs don’t require money? That empty classrooms don’t need teachers? That a lack of substitutes might require additional pay? That a shortage of bus drivers might require additional pay? That a lack of proper supply funding at the state level might require the County to boost spending? That AC repair might be expensive? That the sports programs that everybody insists cost money?
Thanks Joe..
Hopefully those parents who can do it goes to home school.
With the amount of people moving to joco you can really tell how many are pulling their kids out of schools. If the expectation was growth of 729 but there was a decline of 97 that’s actually about 800+ students not going to the government schools. This is good news!
It’s a good thing. Things need to slow down
98 students, I know as a teacher, some kids do not come to school until the 11th day.
What fine upstanding parents they must have to let them show 10 days after the school year starts. I’m sure they’ll be honor rollers
Thank Goodness……..
Well, that says alot for the validity of the “data”. It also is telling that parents have become more aware of the government schools’ agenda to indoctrinate and dumb down. I hope the trend continues. Now, what will the administration do with the extra growth money? Start a new office to find out why the parents are doing this? A new administrator to enforce homeschool DEI? A new office to regulate the home school curriculum more than it is already or an enforcement leg of that? Raising children is a parents MOST important job–looks like that is where this is going and its a good thing.
The best thing abt homeschool is that it is not regulated as to which curriculum you choose. Any push to do so will be met with great resistance by many, if not all, homeschool families as well as legal teams.
Schools aren’t the problem, you entitled parents and lazy parents are. Your kids are failures because of you.
Bingo! We have a winner Chuck , tell them what they win…
Based on the current state of public education, what rational, caring, concerned parents would send their kids to public schools?
My granddaughter graduated with a two year college degree so I have zero complaints with the public schools here. My grandson will be doing the same in a few years. They are both highly intelligent and well educated unlike some of the people I see on here. All of my other grandchildren are in the AG programs. They all learn a variety of subjects that need to be known to succeed in the world today and in the future. Even the ones in elementary school are taking subjects I never took in high school.