HICKORY — Hickory City Schools has logged a decrease of about 100 students, Superintendent Jennifer Griffin said in her report to the school board on Monday, Sept. 28.
The district posted the report the next day. Griffin wrote that school districts across North Carolina are seeing declines in average daily membership, and that Hickory is in the same pattern. “We have seen a decrease of approximately 100 students in our district,” she said. Declining enrollment, she wrote, “has real implications for staffing, resources, and future budget planning.”
The report says the administrative team is looking at what the change could mean as it builds next year’s budget, and that the goal is to keep resources matched to students and to the district’s instructional priorities. It does not say which prior count the decrease is measured against, and it does not give a school-by-school breakdown.
A 2025 study, separate from Monday’s figure
The new decrease is not the same number as an enrollment and capacity study the county has posted, dated Nov. 25, 2025. That study lists 4,665 students in kindergarten through 12th grade for 2007-08. Its 2025-26 line lists 3,648 students in those grades, and 120 prekindergarten students on top of that.
The study’s facility summary covers nine schools. It lists gross capacity at 6,698 seats and adjusted capacity at 5,511. Utilization on the 3,648 figure is printed at 54.46 percent. Those pages describe 2025-26. They are not a tally of the decrease Griffin reported on Sept. 28.
One high school campus
In the same Monday report, Griffin said design work is still moving on a single campus for Hickory High School and Hickory Career & Arts Magnet. The district calls that project Project Stormhouse. She said meetings were being held that week at each of the two schools so staff and others could comment on the design.
The merger clock is separate
The Sept. 28 report does not mention the proposal to combine Hickory City Schools, Newton-Conover City Schools, and Catawba County Schools.
Written briefs from the three districts are still due Oct. 5 to the State Board of Education. In a Sept. 3 letter with Newton-Conover Superintendent Emily Shaw, Griffin wrote that the State Board had unanimously approved its review schedule, and that the merger “has not been approved.”
Catawba County’s schools page says commissioners advanced the plan because long-running enrollment declines in the two city systems have left buildings underused and have cut into funding that follows enrollment, while Catawba County Schools has needed more classroom space.
Earlier coverage: School districts’ merger briefs due Oct. 5 under State Board review schedule
Source note
Tip that surfaced this story: a Facebook post by Catawba Valley News & Weather on Sept. 30, 2026, shared with the newsroom without other instructions. The decrease, the budget language, and the high-school design note were checked against the superintendent’s report Hickory City Schools posted from the Sept. 28 meeting. The 2007-08 and 2025-26 counts, capacities, and utilization rate were checked against the county’s Nov. 25, 2025 enrollment and capacity study. The brief deadline and the county’s stated reasons were checked against the county schools page and the Sept. 3 joint letter from Griffin and Shaw. No wording or image from the Facebook post was reused.
Cover: File photo of Oakwood Elementary School in Hickory, taken in September 2012. It is not a photograph of the Sept. 28 board meeting. Photo by Tylerg, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
