Schools Reflect a Society Where People Move On Like Tumbleweeds

Wind-whipped tumbleweeds spin past the Stead Elementary School north of Reno, giving tangible sense of the continual movement of children enrolling or departing as they follow their families down a Nevada road to another home.

Principal Francey Dennis is in another school year with “lots and lots and lots of names to learn.” She looks at one child’s record: five schools in five years.

It is the same at other schools. District Supt. Marvin Moss thumbs through a drawer of file cards on former students. One student’s card shows six transfers in three grades, another card lists nine transfers in eight years of elementary school.

“I think we have a highly mobile society,” he said simply. “People aren’t averse to moving all over the country.”

The Washoe County School District uses a “transiency” rate that compares a school’s annual number of incoming transfers and outgoing withdrawals against its initial enrollment in September.

The Echo Loder elementary school had a transiency rate of 104% last year, meaning 262 students started in September, 38 transferred in later from outside the state, 82 came in from other schools in the district, and 153 students withdrew to move elsewhere.

The school’s rate has been as high as 162% during the 1980-81 school year. Other schools have also had rates over 100% in recent years.

Dr. Paul Killian, who gathers the statistics for the district, said the majority of most schools are “stable,” with the dramatic figures due to a small, but constantly changing, minority.

The Stead Elementary School has been somewhat steadier, having a 66% rate last year. September started with 676 students, and through the year 70 students came in from out of state, 126 transferred from other district schools, and 252 withdrew.

Its principal, Dennis, will prepare 1,200 notebooks for students’ use. Starting with fewer than 700 students when the school bell rings in September, she will be out of notebooks by year’s end.

“Three years (in the school make for) one of our most stable families,” she said.

Costs Increased

She estimates that the movement might add between 5% to 10% to the cost of book supplies in addition to increasing the workload on the staff. New students have to be processed and introduced to the program, and their parents are sometimes unable or unwilling to become involved in school affairs, she said.

“Some kids withdraw,” Dennis said, “others to compensate will be overly aggressive. Sometimes kids come in with a chip on their shoulders.

“A lot of times you’ll see a kid in third grade having trouble, and you look back at his record, and see eight schools in the first grade.”

Students often fall behind if they move often, she said. “You just start to make progress, and they have to move. The parents may be involved, but there’s nothing they can do.”

The need for stability is “much more critical in primary grades,” according to psychologist Max Evans of the Washoe County School District. Reading programs are different from school to school, and it takes crucial time to adjust, he said.

“Anxiety interferes with the ability to perform,” he said of the stress placed on children at a new school.

“If it’s a frequently moving family, the kids may feel they don’t have to make a commitment to a place. They think, ‘Hey, I’m going to be moving next week, I don’t have to do this work.’ ”

“I’ll often suggest to parents that they take their children into consideration” when they’re planning a move, he said.