Kindergarten enrollment rebounds in some greater Bridgeport communities
Kindergarten enrollment is on the rebound in some towns in greater Bridgeport, although a few districts are still seeing declines compared to pre-pandemic numbers.
Though official enrollment totals won’t be taken until next month, school districts shared early counts with Hearst Connecticut Media over the last few weeks.
Districts including Monroe and Derby are seeing their largest kindergarten classes in the past few years, while others, such as Bridgeport and Ansonia, have yet to reach their pre-pandemic levels.
And though enrollment depends on a variety of factors, including birth trends and moving patterns, it begs the question if some children have left the public school system permanently.
According to state 2020-21 data, public school enrollment dropped 3 percent during the first two months of last school year, and more than half of that decline was in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten. Kindergarten enrollment fell by 4,343 students — a nearly 12 percent decline, Hearst Connecticut reported in November.
At the time, some speculated that parents held young students home for the year, while others sent their children to private and parochial schools or homeschooled. Time will tell whether those students continue down that path, but a letter from the Diocese of Bridgeport on Friday said elementary enrollment has grown by approximately 10 percent over last year.
In Fairfield, though the district does not yet have final numbers for September, the schools have seen an increase over both last year and the most recent pre-pandemic school year.
Before school began this year, the district shared an estimate of a 700-student kindergarten enrollment. Last fall, Fairfield enrolled under 600 kindergartners, according to state data.
Fairfield officials surmise that some families may have held off enrolling their kindergarten-eligible children last year, and this year’s increase could be a combination of those children returning plus new families moving to the popular suburb.
Full-time school, COVID-19 mitigation strategies and a high vaccination rate may have also made families feel more comfortable about going back to school.
Derby, too, shared it had 104 kindergartners enrolled this week, compared to 86 in the fall of last year, according to state data. Trumbull reported 472 of the young students this week — close to a 12 percent increase since last year, Hearst Connecticut found.
Milford had 373 students enrolled in kindergarten as of Friday, Kathy Bonetti, the district’s communications coordinated, said. That marks roughly a 30-student increase from the fall of last year.
But Bonetti cautioned against making assumptions based on that data.
“The raw number of students in Kindergarten from year to year may sometimes lead to a false assumption of growth or reduction,” she wrote in an email. “Some years class sizes are simply bigger than other years — or smaller than other years.”
A district official from Stratford said before classes started kindergarten enrollment was at 453 students, which was higher than it was fall of 2019, according to state data. In Monroe, the schools estimated 250 kindergartners — also greater than pre-pandemic, when enrollment hovered closer to 200 students.
But not all school districts have rebounded the same way.
Ansonia Public Schools welcomed about 20 fewer kindergartners this year than in the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years.
“To be honest, we do not know why they are lower than in past years,” said Stephen Bergin, the assistant superintendent. “Of course we can speculate that parents may hold their children back due to COVID but that would only be speculative.”
The class sizes did, however, stay relatively steady last fall, when most other districts saw the biggest drops in kindergarten enrollment.
Bridgeport, which saw its overall enrollment drop by 800 students early last year, took a substantial hit to its youngest grades, too. The district’s 2020-21 kindergarten class was close to 300 students smaller than that of 2019-20.
This year’s kindergarten enrollment, which superintendent Michael Testani said on Friday hovered around 1,400 students, is still far below that of the most recent pre-pandemic count: 1,625 students.
“I’m assuming as we get further into this month, we’ll see the numbers grow a little bit,” said Testani. The district’s kindergarten enrollment has already grown by close to 400 students since July.
But the superintendent suggested that number still might not return to what it was in the fall before the pandemic.
“We still have kids that are leaving for other locations,” he said, adding that he will have a better sense of charter school enrollment next month.
“Then you have the parochial (schools) that some people opted for last year because they were under different circumstances for COVID,” he added. “And they probably stayed.”