New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Magnet schools see decline in enrollment
NEW HAVEN — The city’s magnet schools are losing some of their pull.
In the span of a two days this month, for instance, New Haven Public Schools officials went from projecting a loss of 73 suburban students in city magnet schools to losing 133 of the roughly 3,000 suburban students enrolled in the district.
“It has become a much bigger problem,” said NHPS Chief Financial Officer Phil Penn.
In part the loss is an issue as magnet schools are recognized by the state as a means of voluntary desegregation: the state gives magnet school districts
$7,085 in additional funding for each student it enrolls from another school district as a means of creating more racially and economically integrated schools than would occur through locally zoned neighborhood schools.
New Haven’s magnet school program was expected to bring in $37 million for the district this year from state grants.
The subsidizing of magnet schools incentivizes urban school districts such as New Haven, which operates 16 interdistrict magnet schools, to use the additional funding to operate schools with themed curriculum that will appeal to suburban as well as resident students.
With dropping enrollment amid school closed for distance-only learning at least until November, New Haven is beginning to sweat over its budget math. Superintendent of Schools Iline Tracey said the district might lose about $972,000 from its grant under the latest projection.
“That puts us about $400,000 below what the 2019-2020 grant level was,” said Penn.
Students — both residents of the city and suburban students — are seated in schools through a lottery, which creates a waiting list for entry. The district cannot enroll more than 75 percent resident students within its interdistrict magnet schools per state law.
“They’re working through the wait lists as best they can,” said Penn.
However, Tracey acknowledged to the Register that it may be a futile to recruit suburban students this year as city schools remain for now in a distance-learning mode.
“The trend seems to be students from the suburbs where schools are opened prefer to have their children in school. It would not make sense recruiting when schools are remote,” she said.
According to information provided by the school district, overall enrollment in magnet schools remains strong: Preliminary figures show there are 7,634 students enrolled in magnet schools this year, whereas there were 7,661 students enrolled in 2019-20. However, the percentage of students from others towns has dropped from 33.5 percent to 32.7 percent. In 2018-19, when there were 7,816 students enrolled in the magnet schools, the share of students who don’t reside in New Haven was 33.8 percent.
Penn said that “anecdotally” the district has heard that enrollment is dropping for reasons related to the school district not opening its doors during the pandemic— such as a need for child care when young children are home alone while parents work.
In some school districts in the state, including where in-person learning is an option, preliminary magnet school enrollment varies.
“The trend is clear that students are returning to the Middletown Public Schools,” said Middletown Superintendent of Schools Michael Conner.
Of the 290 students who enrolled in out-of-district schools in 2019-20, Conner said preliminary figures show a number coming back. A magnet middle school in South Windsor that enrolled 93 Middletown students in 2018-2019, for example, is expected to enroll only 80 this year once enrollment numbers are finalized. He said the opening of a new middle school in Middletown at the start of the next academic year may contribute to why some families are returning to the district.
“I think the pandemic also contributes as many families may be consciously choosing to stay closer to home,” he said.
But in Stamford’s Strawberry Hill Magnet School, where a grade has been added each year since 20182019, the pandemic has not appeared to dampen enthusiasm from out-of-town families. In fact, the share of out-of-district students has grown from 27.9 percent to 30.5 percent this year. In total, the school’s enrollment has preliminarily grown by 102 students after adding a fifth grade class this year, according to the district.
In Capitol Region Education Council magnet schools, enrollment has grown among Hartford residents while dropping among suburban students. The number of students from outside Hartford enrolled in CREC magnet schools fell by almost 200 as of this month, from 4,943 last year to 4,751 this academic year. However, enrollment has grown overall. So far, an estimated 4,093 Hartford students have enrolled in CREC schools; the year prior, that number was 3,669.
Enrollment numbers in all schools are considered preliminary until October, when districts report their enrollment numbers to the state.
“(T)here’s really no anecdotal information coming in, nor can we draw any analysis of how COVID is affecting magnet school enrollment,” said Connecticut State Department of Education spokesman Peter Yazbak. “I don’t think that we’ll be able to draw many conclusions until later this fall when we are able to see - after some possible shifting - where students end up.”
New Haven Board of Education member Tamiko Jackson-McArthur argued in 2019 for the district to enroll more resident students in magnet schools; up to that point, the district was aiming to fill 35 percent of magnet seats with suburban students to maximize grant funding from the state. Jackson-McArthur said the end result was that well-funded, desirable schools sit in New Haven students’ backyards but they can’t attend them; she pushed for an effort to change the ratio to enroll more city students in magnet schools.
Now, she said the suburban flight from the magnet schools should be a lesson.
“The magnet money is tied to suburban kids, mostly white kids, attending New Haven schools,” she said. “The move of suburban families to return to their home districts, along with other districts development (of) magnet programs, should bring about good discussion around the validity of maintaining these (ratio) requirements in order to get money to educate the district.”
Although the loss in magnet grant funding could result in a loss of teaching jobs, the president of the teachers’ union believes the drop in enrollment is a temporary blip.
“I think once we get COVID behind us there will be more of a sense of normalcy,” David Cicarella said. “I don’t think there should be a knee-jerk reaction at this point. Once the COVID concerns are behind us I think we’ll see the kids returning to the schools, and to neighborhood schools as well.”