‘Huge amount’ of students enroll day before school starts in DeKalb School District

DeKALB – On Tuesday evening, the night before the first day of school, the DeKalb School District Board of Education discussed the large number of last-minute enrollments for the 2021-2022 school year.

Enrollment for the upcoming school year is March through May, but Deetra Sallis, the school district’s director of human resources, said that the “huge amount of late registrations” is “COVID-related to some extent.”

“But also, just the transient populations that we serve, also people might be migrating from homeschooling or private schooling, all sorts of contributing factors,” Sallis said. “It’s a commonality in almost all, if not all, districts.”

There are 112 overflow students who have been placed in classrooms and schools temporarily due to their late registration.

“Students are not guaranteed a spot in the school they were in prior if they do not register earlier,” said Superintendent Minerva Garcia-Sanchez.

The school district’s website states that returning elementary students who are not registered by May 10 are not guaranteed their spot at the school they currently attend. DeKalb high school and middle school students will not receive their schedules until online registration is completed.

Due to shifting enrollment and classroom space opening up throughout the school year, students could be moved to their prior school at a later date.

At Gwendolyn Brooks Elementary School, 10 overflow students were added to the school’s two first-grade classrooms. The school district is hiring a third first-grade teacher for the school.

Garcia-Sanchez said that the abundance of new students could be seen as something positive.

“I love the fact that we have all these new students and families and they want to be here,” she said.

Registration for DeKalb School District 428 can be completed online at www.boundaries.d428.org. For more information, call the school district at 815-754-2350.