ENROLLMENT

Still, Tracey said that none of the district’s programs are at stake yet because of falling enrollment. For the first time in years, New Haven school officials are projecting a year-end surplus — this largely owing to cost savings associated with keeping buildings closed during the pandemic.

New Haven Federation of Teachers President Dave Cicarella said that if enrollment continues to trend down “it will have a ripple effect.”

“Places like New Haven and the priority districts live off federal and state money,” he said. “Without money, those programs dry up.”

New Haven Board of Education member Darnell Goldson said the drop student population is a trend that has occurred over several years and he is “not concerned if it follows a natural decrease in city population.”

However, he said, “Our job is not to try to increase student censuses in order to bring in additional funding, but instead to adequately educate the children we do have.”

No rush to adjust

Some school district leaders also say the pandemic has shuffled a number of students around, leading to unexpected enrollment trends. In Greater New Haven, for example, several officials believe the decision of the New Haven school board not to open the school buildings was felt throughout the region.

“My biggest concern, and I’ve expressed it to the state’s Department of Education, that having districts doing their own plans is going to have an impact on all of us,” said West Haven Superintendent of Schools Neil Cavallaro.

Some school district leaders said balancing enrollment can be a challenge educators expect every year.

“We continually make adjustments, but we feel really good about where we are, the offerings we have and the direction we are going as a district,” said Geen Thazhampallath, director of talent and benefits for Middletown Public Schools, where enrollment dropped by 4.6 percent — from 4,620 to 4,409 since last year.

“Enrollment often fluctuates over time and year to year, so it's hard to speak to a momentary snapshot in time,” Thazhampallath said.

In some school districts where enrollment has fallen, district leaders believe the pandemic has caused a blip but those district are working to and have the means to attract students back.

Thazhampallath said the demagnetization of Thomas Edison Middle School, a Meriden magnet school, and the opening of a new middle school in the city likely means a number of Middletown resident students enrolled in Meriden schools will return to their home district next year.

Will Clark, the chief operating officer for Waterbury Public Schools, said that enrollment fell short of projections, especially in the youngest grades, but system leaders do not expect to take immediate action.

“From a capacity standpoint we are confident of our ability to adjust to the needs and expand and contract grade levels as needed,” he said.

Region 6 and Litchfield Public Schools Superintendent Chris Leone said his district continues

“to monitor enrollment patterns and fluctuation during an uncertain year as we head into the budget season.” In Litchfield, enrollment dropped 7.8 percent this year, according to preliminary numbers.

Younger students

One of the most concerning statistics for school districts is that more than 50 percent of the state’s decline in enrollment is concentrated in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten, the youngest grades. If schools can’t enroll more students from the classes of 2033 and 2034, it means lower enrollment totals could plague them for years.

In New Haven, where school board members eliminated a child care program that provided extended hours before and after the school day — a benefit to working parents in New Haven and also other towns who accessed the district through its magnet program — the number of pre-kindergarten students enrolled in the district plummeted by 176. In kindergarten, the number of enrolled students fell by 285.

It has been a boon to West Haven’s pre-kindergarten enrollment, where a large number of parents had relied on New Haven’s system for child care. Although the system was initially projected to lose 17 pre-kindergarten students, the district now reports a 60 student increase. However, West Haven’s Cavallaro said it comes with increased costs to the district because of special education needs.

“We must find additional space to house the (special education) classes, hire additional teachers and support staff, and purchase the specialized equipment needed to educate those students. While we realize we are obligated to educate those with special needs, cost is a growing concern,” he said.

At home

Education officials at the state and local levels say they are hearing from some parents of young children that they are looking out for their children’s safety and educational well-being during the pandemic by pulling them from public schools for the year.

According to state officials, the number of students who left public schools for home-schooling in 2019-2020 was 547; as of November, that number for this year was 3,571.

Carrie Keogh, a New Haven mother, made the decision to enroll her daughter in a parochial school when she learned the school district would not be opening its doors to students. Keogh enrolled her daughter in first grade at St. Rita’s School, a Catholic school in Hamden.

“When the schools closed in March we received very little support. I only got three telephone calls from her teacher from between March and the end of school in June. I did all the homeschooling with her at the dining room table,” she said. “I knew if we got into the situation again with New Haven Public Schools I was afraid I wouldn’t have the support I needed if they stayed on remote.”

Although Keogh’s daughter was enrolled at Edgewood School, which is not an interdistrict magnet school, she is one of hundreds of parents who have exited the system since last year.

“All year long, with everything going on, parents are finding themselves having to make decisions to suit their family,” said Diane Connors, founder of the Connecticut Homeschool Network. “That could be temporary, it could be for a year. Some are intending to send their kids back. It’s not that they’re upset with the school system, it’s that they have to do what they have to do.”

Connors said she was recently in contact with four families looking for assistance and guidance as they considered making a transition to homeschooling, and she ordinarily expects a surge in late December when schools are in recess.

The biggest issue for many homeschooling families is timing and scheduling, she said. Although homeschooling can be offered online in a similar fashion to the remote learning used by many school districts, it can be difficult to assist a learning child when they are on the school’s schedule and not the parent’s or student’s schedule.

“With home education, you can control when you do your academics,” she said.

New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker said he suspects much of New Haven’s decline is due to magnet school students returning to their home districts for in-person education and parents of young children delaying their child’s education because of the pandemic. However, he said city government must work to make the city a more affordable place to live if enrollment is going to stay level or increase in future years.

“New Haven has increasingly become a place where housing prices are very high, making it more difficult for us to have a more economically diverse population to opt into the school system,” he said. “I think what’s important for us to look at is whether the decrease in enrollment in this year in particular, presuming it’s driven by COVID, is something we can reverse when cases go down by opening up schools.”

He said he hopes the state can recognize that much of the drop in enrollment is a temporary impact of the virus and that municipal aid is not lowered as a result.

Elicker has pointed to some research suggesting that young children may not spread the virus as easily as older individuals and that schools are often not super spreading transmission sites, to argue that the city should plan to reopen its schools.

“The bigger picture is making sure New Haven schools are of high quality, making sure New Haven is an affordable place to live and that’s by improving our options for affordable housing and addressing our financial problems so our taxes aren’t so high, making New Haven a more livable city overall,” Elicker said.