Schools shrinking following 20 years of growth

Texas public school enrollment has turned a corner after increasing consistently for about 20 years. It’s now expected to decline over the next decade, even as the state ranks as one of the fastest-growing in the U.S.

“We’ve added probably 75,000 kids a school year for the better part of 10 to 15 years,” Education Commissioner Mike Morath said in a legislative hearing on Monday. “To put that in perspective, that’s sort of like an Austin ISD-sized school system just emerges from whole-cloth every single year.”

That will now be changing thanks to decreased birth rates in the state, and the effects could be sharply felt by Texas public schools, which the state Legislature funds based on their average daily attendance.

The decrease is driven largely by Hispanic Texans having less children, said Lloyd Potter, director of the Institute for Demographic and Socioeconomic Research at the University of Texas at San Antonio. That demographic group for years had very high birth rates, he said, but it has slowed down significantly since 2007, although the rate remains higher than for other racial-ethnic groups.

For the first time in his career, Potter said Texas’ birth rate in 2011 fell below the replacement rate — the rate at which enough people are being born for a naturally increasing population. Since then, the state’s population has grown instead through migration, which has been robust.

“Now at the Morath household, we have four very young children. We are producing!” Morath joked at the hearing, drawing laughs.

The phenomenon is not unique to Texas. Less diverse states such as those in the Midwest have been hit particularly hard, Potter said, and even larger, diverse states such as Florida, California and New York are affected.

With fewer students, Texas schools would receive less state education funding.

“You still need a teacher at each of those classroom and each of those campuses, and when you’re having enrollment declines, some school districts are going to have to really think hard about what campuses they’re going to keep open — and can they afford to keep them open,” said Bob Popinksi, policy director for Raise Your Hand Texas, the public education research and advocacy group backed by Howard Butt, CEO of H-E-B grocery stores.

Texas’ enrollment growth in recent years has been driven by explosive growth in less than 100 suburban districts, Popinski said. Some larger districts have already seen decreases in enrollment — and corresponding budgetary problems.

Complicating the problem, traditional school districts and charter schools are locked in a heated, zero-sum competition for students. That rivalry would likely grow more intense with fewer students to compete over.

In addition, Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick are pushing for policies to support private schools with taxpayer dollars, which would almost certainly cause more students to transfer out of public schools.

“Three separate systems would be a constant battle for appropriate and adequate funding,” Popinski said.