Count Day has come and gone.

With this semester’s preliminary numbers, the district is looking at about 300 more full-time equivalency (FTE) students, which will result in a spike in the district’s funding. FTE in the traditional schools are down overall, but online students resulted in the boost.

Assistant Superintendent for Student Services Denise Sweat briefly went over the numbers during the Oct. 9 board of education meeting. At this time, the numbers are in a preliminary stage. They will go to audit in February 2019 and will be finalized that April.

“Oxford has 30 days after the count day to submit preliminary numbers,” Sweat said in an email. “As stated at the board meeting our district is seeing an increase of approximately 300 FTE. but the district will not have final audited numbers until April 2019.”

According to Sweat, Oxford is looking at a total of 6,514.29 FTE district-wide, which will result in increased state funding. Oxford currently receives $7,871 per FTE.

During the meeting, Sweat said the spike in FTE is primarily coming from Oxford Virtual Academy (OVA), shared time students and Oxford High School.

Shared time students are students from other districts who take Oxford classes online through their home district’s school.

Superintendent Tim Throne was unsuprised by the slight drop in  and overall stagnace of traditional seated students in the last five years, but noted he is proud of the growth and work put in by OVA.

“We will be making major investments again (to OVA) based on this latest count,” Throne said in an email. “We will be adding teachers, mentors, support personnel and space. It is sort of ironic that we need additional space for a virtual program, but we do.”

Here are the preliminary numbers:

• Clear Lake Elementary is down 26.
• Daniel Axford Elementary is up 16.
• Lakeville Elementary is down four.
• Leonard Elementary is down eight.
• Oxford Elementary is down 33.
• Oxford Middle School is down 14.
• Oxford High School is up 14.
• Crossroads is down 2.
• OVA is up about 360.