Cathleen Allison/Nevada Appeal Carson High School students head to class after lunch Friday. School district officials completed an official head count Friday that will be used to determine how much funding the district receives from the state.
The number of students attending school in Carson City is down again this year, but not by as much as school officials had predicted.
Superintendent Mary Pierczynski said the count Friday was 8,186 students, 134 less than last year. She said the district had predicted the student population would fall 185.
This is the fifth straight school year the total number of students in the Carson City School District has gone down.
The high year was 2003 when there were 8,827 students.
Pierczynski said she was pleased to see "a little bit of leveling off with the elementaries."
Last year, the elementary population went down 167 and was expected to suffer again this year. But she said the dip this year was just seven students.
"Over the last five years, that has not been the case so I'd hate to say it's a trend," she said. "We'll have to see how that goes the next few years."
Almost all of the decline was in Carson High School's student population, which fell 111 students this year to 2,409. There were also 112 students at the alternative campus Pioneer High, which actually saw its population increase by 27 students this year. The net decline in the high school total was 85 students.
The official count day for public schools statewide was Friday. Those numbers are used by the state Department of Education to determine how much state funding each school district receives. Nevada's education funding plan guarantees a base per student amount for each school year. This fiscal and school year, that amount is $5,122.
• Contact reporter Geoff Dornan at gdornan@nevadaappeal.com or 687-8750.