{"id":72114,"date":"2025-12-01T23:18:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T23:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/72114\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T23:18:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T23:18:11","slug":"richardson-isd-enrollment-down-1-76-from-last-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/72114\/","title":{"rendered":"Richardson ISD enrollment down 1.76% from last year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/web.risd.org\/home\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Richardson ISD\u2019s<\/a> enrollment is down by 652 students from last year, according to district data.<\/p>\n<p>RISD\u2019s board of trustees received an update on the district\u2019s enrollment, as well as ongoing strategies to combat enrollment declines, during its <a href=\"https:\/\/richardsonisdtx.new.swagit.com\/videos\/361870\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Nov. 20 meeting<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The big picture<\/p>\n<p>RISD\u2019s enrollment as of Oct. 27 is 36,969, down by more than 2,700 students since the district\u2019s enrollment peaked in 2019.<\/p>\n<p>Nearly 80% of the 652-student decrease in enrollment came from RISD\u2019s emergent bilingual population, according to the presentation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe don&#8217;t know specifically why, but &#8230; we do know that many families have made decisions to return back to their home countries or to move closer to family to make sure that there are layers of support,\u201d RISD Assistant Superintendent Matthew Gibbins said.<\/p>\n<p>Diving in deeper<\/p>\n<p>All RISD grade levels except for first, 11th and 12th grade saw a decrease in enrollment over the last year. The steepest declines of 168 and 105 students came at the second and ninth grade levels, respectively. RISD\u2019s total enrollment was also 224 students less than demographer projections, which are used when creating district budgets.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/thumbnail.jpeg\" width=\"100%\" alt=\"chart visualization\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Gibbins added that while RISD is seeing enrollment decline, it is \u201cnot to the degree\u201d of surrounding districts. Dallas, <a href=\"https:\/\/communityimpact.com\/dallas-fort-worth\/plano-north\/education\/2025\/09\/10\/plano-isd-enrollment-decline-steeper-than-projected\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Plano<\/a> and Garland ISDs saw enrollment declines of 9.1%, 11.4% and 8.4%, respectively, from 2019-24\u2014a time frame in which RISD enrollment declined by 6.9%.<\/p>\n<p>Looking ahead<\/p>\n<p>District staff are considering several initiatives to address declining enrollment, including enhancement of its <a href=\"https:\/\/communityimpact.com\/dallas-fort-worth\/richardson\/education\/2025\/02\/27\/inter-district-transfer-on-the-horizon-for-richardson-isd\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">open enrollment program,<\/a> which was instituted earlier this year and allows out-of-district students to transfer into RISD.<\/p>\n<p>The presentation also noted eliminating barriers in the transfer and enrollment process, upgrades to Magnet and Choice programs, developing a virtual school option and increased marketing as potential strategies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur goal is to figure out what Richardson ISD needs to look like in the future to recover these students and get them back in Richardson ISD,\u201d Superintendent Tabitha Branum said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Richardson ISD\u2019s enrollment is down by 652 students from last year, according to district data. RISD\u2019s board of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72115,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[2338,36096,160,162,161,959,5810],"class_list":{"0":"post-72114","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-plano","8":"tag-enrollment","9":"tag-enrollment-decline","10":"tag-plano","11":"tag-plano-headlines","12":"tag-plano-news","13":"tag-richardson","14":"tag-richardson-isd"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}