After many months making statewide news because of financial troubles, Muncie Community Schools has lost nearly five hundred students, according to preliminary enrollment numbers.  IPR’s Tony Sandleben reports.

A report shared with Muncie Community Schools board members on Tuesday night shows the district has 5,076 students.  That’s down 494 students from the end of last year.  And if the preliminary numbers are truly the actual numbers, that’s a bigger loss than the 462 students MCS lost after it consolidated its two high schools.

But as board member Andy Warrner reminded the meeting’s audience, the numbers are preliminary.

“So how many of those 494 were just kids that were never born and we never had them?”

Warrner wants district officials to find out how many of those students left for another district or are now being home-schooled.  That would determine any reporting errors.

MCS Superintendent Steven Baule also pointed out these numbers do not include any foreign exchange students, as they have not arrived yet.

A 2016 enrollment forecast done by Ball State University researchers predicted MCS would slowly lose students over the next 15 years, by less than one percent per year.  It predicted an enrollment of 5,400 students by 2030.

But that forecast was completed before Muncie was labeled as a “fiscally-impaired” district by the legislature and given a state-appointed emergency management team to pull it out of millions of dollars of debt.

On Tuesday night, that emergency management team also said it is considering turning to state government for more financial help for MCS.

Stephanie Wiechmann contributed to this report.