Alumni Support Needed

As the school enrollment continues to increase, the need for alumni support will become greater. We are arguably the best resource to attract new students to come to MHS and the best resource to convince students to stay at MHS.

The best way to illustrate this need is with an example. To make the math very simple assume that there were 2000 students after graduation and that 200 students just graduated.

Looking to the next school year, just to maintain the same enrollment, the school must replace those 200 graduating students and must replace all the expected students that will be lost to attrition. The retention goal for the school is 90% - the 40 year average (1968-2008) has been about 88%. That means the minimum number of new students will exceed 400 – 200 to replace those who graduated and at least 200 to replace those who leave during the next school year.

The school embarks on a major enrollment period during August. It would be very likely that 300 of the needed students would be enrolled in this time frame. If this were the case, then the starting school enrollment would be 2300. (2000 carryover plus 300 new).

The school enrolls students all through the year and students attrit all through the year. If the school added 150 students during the year then there would have been 2450 students enrolled. If there is a 10% attrition (a total of 245) then just before graduation there would be 2205 students – basically the same enrollment as the year before.

Thus to maintain a constant enrollment a total of 450 students will have to be enrolled – 200 to offset graduation and the rest to offset attrition. If we are trying to increase enrollment, we will need even more.

How can alumni help in the recruitment of students or help in increasing the retention rate.

In the recruitment area, there are Opportunity Fairs and there is the Spartan Ambassador Program.

For those who deal with the retention problem in the work environment, it is often said that retention is a better solution than recruitment. After 40 years of the same retention number, now is the time to come up with some thoughts, plans and actions to improve it. These are children that need to be saved.

p.s. Attrition is made up of both “withdrawals” and “terminations.” “Withdrawals” are generally student/parent/guardian/sponsor driven and “terminations” are generally school driven. The split between the two has been estimated 75-80% “withdrawal” and 25-20% "termination."

If the school really wanted to do something productive.
why don't they look at opening a campus on the west coast. there are kids all over this country that would benifit.
the central area of Calif is very similar to hershey in the aspect of lots fo open land, farms and space for kids to have a great school.

Just a thought!

thanks,
Scott