The official enrollment tally at ETHS this year shows 3,613 students currently attend the school, the biggest group on campus in 30 years.   The annual Opening School Report which was given at the District 202 School Board meeting on Nov. 12 also shows more boys than girls go to ETHS, that the percentage of Black students continues to decrease and that fewer students are attending off-campus special education programing, among other things. 

The report presents the official school enrollment as of Sept. 30, 2018. Enrollment figures are disaggregated by race/ethnicity and gender. The report also includes information on special education students and average class size.

Enrollment Breakdown

Total enrollment is the highest enrollment in 30 years, which is as far back as ETHS records go according to Carrie Levy, Director of Research, Evaluation and Assessment. Beginning in 2016-2017, official enrollment counts included students attending the ETHS ALT School. Five years ago, there were 3,238 students enrolled, 11% less than this year.

Breaking those numbers down by race/ethnicity shows continuing trends. The proportion of Black/African American students has declined over the previous five years, representing 30.2% of the school population in 2014-15 and 27.3% this year. The proportion of Hispanic/Latino students is 18.5% in 2018-2019, which is the highest in ETHS history, up from 16.6% five years ago. The proportion of White students increased to 45.6% in 2018-19, up from 43.7% five years ago. The proportion of Asian students in 2018-19 is 5.6%, which is the second highest in ETHS history. The proportion of students identified as Two or More Races remained relatively the same at 2.3%, compared to 2.5% in 2017-18 according to the report.

Enrollment in Special Education and the Bilingual Program was presented as well. Special education enrollment is down with the number of students decreasing from 402 in 2017-2018 to 395 in 2018-2019. The number of special education students attending private and public facilities has also decreased by 62% since 2014, going from 143 to 89 students. The bilingual program has more than doubled enrollment over the last five years going from 32 in 2014-15 to 74 students this year.  

Enrollment by gender was broken down by female and male students.  The report shows this year there are 1,763 female and 1,850 male students attending ETHS. When segregated by race, numbers show Black/AA, Hispanic/Latino and White males out-number females, while American Indian, Asian, Native Hawaiian and multi-racial females outnumber males. 

Class size

Average class size was broken down by department and data was presented for a five year period. The average class size has remained quite steady, averaging 22 students per class this year. Physical education/wellness has the largest class sizes, with an average of 28 students. Human Services and Industrial Technology classes are the smallest, with an average of 20 students. 

Board members did not ask any questions about the report. “I’ll just say thank you parents keep those children coming,” concluded Superintendent Eric Witherspoon.

The entire report can be found on the ETHS website with other materials from the Nov. 12 School Board meeting.