WILLOW CREEK — Principal Colleen Desjardins delivered some rare good news at Monday’s budget hearing: Willow Creek K-8 School enrollment rose by seven students this academic year, the first increase since 2017.
The current enrollment of 149 students, while still far below the 210 peak of the early 2010s, represents a 4.9% uptick that Desjardins attributed to a combination of factors: three new families who moved to town for remote work, an unusually large kindergarten cohort, and two families who had previously been homeschooling their children.
“Seven students doesn’t sound like much in a district of twenty thousand,” Desjardins said. “In a town of eighteen hundred, it’s a signal. People are choosing to raise their children here — or choosing to stay.”
The uptick has practical implications for the school’s budget. State education funding in Maine is calculated partly on enrollment, and Desjardins estimated the increase could bring an additional $42,000 in state subsidy next year — money she has already earmarked for the textbook replacement fund.
School board chair Margaret Barnes — no relation to the namesake of the historic sloop — said the board is cautiously optimistic but wary of reading too much into a single year’s data.
“Let’s see what next September brings,” Barnes said. “But it sure beats the other direction.”