Oconee County Schools had 130 fewer students as the school year began on Aug. 3 than it had at the beginning of last school year, according to First Day Counts released by system Human Resources Officer Justin Cofer on Thursday.
Last year, based on those same counts, enrollment had dropped by 259 students, and the year before the drop had been by 26 students.
The last increase in enrollments at Oconee County Schools was at the beginning of the 2023-2024 school year, when the system added 30 students, based on First Day Counts.
Oconee County Schools had 120 fewer elementary school students at the beginning of this year compared with last year, four more middle school students, and 14 fewer high school students.
Among the system’s six elementary schools, only Oconee County Elementary School and Dove Creek Elementary School had increases in enrollment, by one student and by 15 students, respectively.
Dove Creek Middle School had 30 fewer students at the beginning of this year than last, while Malcom Bridge Middle School had 23 more students, and Oconee County Middle School had 11 more students.
Oconee County High School had two fewer student on the first day of school this year than last, and North Oconee High School had 12 fewer students.
Oconee County Schools has excess capacity of 1,443 students at the elementary school level, 1,000 students at the middle school level, and 295 students at the high school level, for a total excess capacity system-wide based on First Day Counts of 2,738.
First Day Counts
Enrollments are unstable, particularly at the beginning of the year, so First Day Counts are only a preliminary estimate of enrollments.
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Because of this initial instability, each school system in the state must report enrollment data to the Georgia Department of Education in the first week of October and in the first week of March. Those numbers are used to calculate the level of state funding through the Quality Basic Education (QBE) formula.
During the period of rapid growth in enrollment, Oconee County Schools administrators reported publicly the First Day Count, often at the first meeting of the school year of the Oconee County Board of Education.
Then Superintendent Debra Harden gave a detailed report on the First Day Count last year in early September at meetings of the Parent Advisory Committee and the Student Advisory Committee.
The data released by Harden last year, combined with the data released by Human Resources Officer Cofer on Thursday, show First Day Counts growing from the beginning of the 2016-2017 to the 2023-2024 school year, when enrollments began to decline, with a very large drop of 259 students last year.
The October counts provide an even longer perspective, showing Oconee County Schools increasing in enrollment from 1994, the first years for which data are available, through October of 2023. Oconee County Schools had drops in enrollments the next two years.
The data released by Cofer on Thursday indicates that trend is most likely going to continue for the third year.
Elementary School Numbers
The drop of First Day Enrollment at the elementary school level actually is in its fourth year, with a drop of two students in 2023-2024 from the year before, followed by a decline of 40 students at the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year, 176 at the start of 2025-2026, and 120 this year compared with last year.
As part of the massive building program approved by the Board for the current Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (ESPLOST), all but one of the system’s six elementary schools reached a capacity of 750 students.
The exception is Oconee County Elementary, which is paired with Oconee County Primary School for K-2 enrollments. Those two buildings have a capacity of 575 and 550 respectively.
Each of the sole primary and six elementary schools has excess capacity of more than 150 students, with High Shoals Elementary School having only 496 students, or 254 fewer than capacity, based on the First Day Count.
Each of the system’s three middle schools, including Dove Creek Middle School, built as part of the current ESPLOST, has a capacity of 1,000 students, but only 2,000 students are spread across the three schools, based on the First Day Count.
Dove Creek Middle School has a First Day Count of 473 students, while Malcom Bridge Middle School has 550 students, and Oconee County Middle School, the oldest of the three schools, has 977 students.
Each of the county’s high schools has a capacity of 1,500 students. The First Day Count for North Oconee High School was 1,466 students, and the First Day Count for Oconee County High School was 1,239.
Perspective On First Day Counts
In response to my request for enrollment data for the current school year, Cofer, on Aug. 26, sent me an email message saying “As of August 24, 2026, Oconee County Schools’ K–12 enrollment is 8,118 students.” Aug. 24 was the beginning of the fourth week of the school year.
“When Pre-K students are included, including students enrolled in our special needs Pre-K program as well as students enrolled elsewhere who receive services from OCS, our total enrollment is 8,171 students,” Cofer said.
“Our projected K–12 enrollment for the 2026–27 school year was 8,146 students, placing our current enrollment within 28 students of projection,” he continued.
“As part of our annual staffing process, we aligned teacher allotments with anticipated enrollment and reduced our teaching staff by seven positions for this school year,” he said.
“As a reminder, our total enrollment will differ from the FTE number reported by the state,” he said. “FTE is calculated using student instructional segments and is used for funding purposes; it does not represent the total number of individual students enrolled in our schools.”
FTE stands for Full Time Equivalent. The state uses the counts from the first week of October and the first week of March to compute FTEs, which are used in the QBE funding formula.
I asked Cofer on Aug. 26 for historical data on the Fourth Week Count, since Oconee County Schools historically has released only First Day Counts.
Cofer provided those historical data on Aug. 27, showing a drop in enrollments from the year before of 120 students, rather than the 130 from the First Day Count.
Based on the Fourth Week Count, the overall enrollment at Oconee County Schools decreased from 8,137 students to 8,118, and the total enrollment at the beginning of the Fourth Week was 19 students lower than the First Day Count.
First Day Counts
After comparing the Fourth Week Counts with the First Day Counts released last year and historically, I asked Oconee County Schools for the First Day Counts for this year.
Cofer released those on Sept. 3.
“As you know, our enrollment fluctuates daily,” he wrote. “The first-day and fourth-week enrollment figures represent two different points in time.”
“I used the fourth-week figure because it provides a more accurate reflection of the enrollment we anticipate serving during the school year,” he said.
“First-day enrollment can include students who remain enrolled in Infinite Campus but ultimately never attend,” he said, referring to the enrollment system used by Oconee County Schools. “By the fourth week, those no-show students have been withdrawn, and enrollment has generally stabilized.”
“Also, because the district projected a slight enrollment decrease for 2026–27, we adjusted staffing accordingly and allotted seven fewer teaching positions than last year to ensure we are aligning personnel with student enrollment and being responsible stewards of financial resources,” he wrote.
Last year, the FTE count for Oct. 7 for Oconee County Schools was 8,282, or 15 students higher than the First Day Count and 44 students more than the Fourth Week Count.
The drop in enrollment from Oct. 1 of 2024 to Oct. 7 of 2025 was 192, compared with the decline of 259 students based on the First Day Counts at the beginning of those school years and 187 based on the Fourth Week Count.
GOP Meeting
Ryan Hammock, running unopposed in November for re-election to Post 3 on the Oconee County Board of Education, made reference to what seem to be the Fourth Week Count in speaking before the Oconee County Republican Party on Aug. 24.
Hammock said one of the most common questions he has received “over the past few week is what is the enrollment for the school system.”
“We’re doing daily counts, constant counts, on where children are,” he said. “Some of them may have left our school system. Some of them may have come into our school system. We have to track those for the state.”
“As of the end of last week we had at North Oconee was right around 1,468 kids,” he said. “Oconee County was right around 1,240 kids. And the system was roughly 8,100.”
Cofer did not break down the Fourth Week Enrollments by school in the data he released to me.
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