Across Michigan, student count is dropping. However, looking into Wayne-Westland Community District Schools, we can see further into how detrimental this issue is.
The district’s student count was at an outstanding 13,006 students during the 2010-11 school year. However, recently, the population of students has decreased to a mere 9,790 students, a 24.7% decrease in students.
The statewide decrease in students, on the other hand, is about a 10.3% decrease since the 2010-11 school year. Statewide student count dropped from 1,602,124 students to 1,437,279 students.
A situation that stands out to me is shown in John Marshall Upper Elementary School, which shows the biggest decrease in population in the Wayne-Westland Community District Schools. It seems, based on no feedback on population for the past 3 years, that the school has closed down.
John Marshall Upper Elementary School had a stable population of around 800-850 students up until the 2019-2020 school year, where the student count dropped drastically to around 350 students.
The obvious cause of this drastic population change is due to Covid-19. This brings up many questions as to what the school did wrong in preventing the spread of the virus amongst its students.
