TDNet Discover

The purpose of this case study is to develop a formalized Strategic Enrollment Management for district administrators at Hudson Area Schools. For the utility of this study, Strategic Enrollment Management will be generally defined as a synchronized data-driven approach to student attraction, retention, and programmatic enhancement utilized to secure long-term district sustainability. The theories guiding this study are General Systems Theory and Resourced Dependence Theory as they illustrate how rural public school districts function as open systems that must actively acquire vital student resources from their external environment to survive and maintain organizational autonomy. The primary research questions will investigate how triangulating qualitative stakeholder insights and quantitative enrollment data can inform a phased strategic roadmap to navigate regional demographic decline and market-driven educational finance. The setting for this study will be rural public school district that currently operates with informal enrollment planning despite facing a permanent structural deficit due to a shrinking enrollment pool. The sample will consist of purposefully selected district leaders and stakeholders who possess deep institutional knowledge of the community’s cultural wealth and historical enrollment patterns. Data collection methods will include gathering qualitative insights through semi-structured interviews and conducting a strategic audit of quantitative enrollment and regional demographic data. To analyze data, the researcher will thematically code the qualitative responses and cross-reference them with multiple data sources to reduce bias, resulting in a step-by-step strategic plan to overcome the rural enrollment death spiral.