Fewer students attend Santa Fe High
District sees drop in enrollment after school shooting
Kendra Hammond already had her doubts about Santa Fe High School before a 17-year-old gunman blasted his way through the school in May.
She pulled her son out following his sophomore year in 2014, after she said the school failed to challenge him academically. Her daughter, who enrolled there as a freshman in 2017, complained that fights and bullying were rampant, so much so that she wanted to transfer to another district. Hammond reassured her that those antics were typical of all high schools and that she should stick it out.
That changed after the May 18 mass shooting left 10 dead and 13 wounded. For Hammond, the massacre and the school district’s response were the final straws. She pulled her daughter out this year, enrolling her in online classes offered through East Texas’ Hallsville ISD.
“I thought we were moving to a quiet country town where our kids could start and finish school in our same district,” Hammond said. “What a disappointment.”
Enrollment at the rural suburban school district dropped more than 4 per-
cent this year, according to attendance data obtained through a public records request. About 200 fewer students attend Santa Fe ISD schools this year compared to the 2017-2018 school year, with half of the loss coming at the lone high school. No other neighboring district, except for the tiny, problem-plagued Hitchcock ISD, has seen such a large decrease in recent years.
As a result, Santa Fe ISD and its high school now educate fewer students than they did in the 20112012 school year, according to Texas Education Agency data.
The drop in population at Santa Fe High School is not an anomaly. Former Columbine High School Principal Frank DeAngelis estimated close to 20 percent of students did not return to the school after two teenage gunmen killed 13 and themselves at the suburban Denver district in 1999, despite numerous security upgrades made to the campus in the shooting’s aftermath.
“A lot of it was really the parents. They were concerned,” DeAngelis said. “We did have students who were given the opportunity by our school district to go to other schools. A lot of kids were home-schooled because coming back to the building traumatized them.”
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, however, did not see the same drops after a 19-year-old former student killed 17 and wounded 17 others on Feb. 14. Only 19 fewer students were enrolled in the Parkland, Fla., school after the first two days of the 2018-2019 school year than the year before, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel. With an enrollment of 3,360, the school’s student population only shrank by about 0.6 percent.
One-two punch
Unlike other schools victimized by mass shootings, Santa Fe High dealt with another disaster in the 2017-2018 school year: Hurricane Harvey.
Data from the TEA suggests nearly 23 percent of the students at the school saw their homes flooded or lost access to basic necessities in the immediate aftermath of the record-breaking storm. Across the district, an estimated 18.6 percent of students were affected by flooding. Santa Fe ISD Spokeswoman Patti Hanssard said some families in the community still are not back in their homes.
However, other nearby schools and districts that suffered similar damage did not see enrollment drop.
More than 11.2 percent of students in Dickinson ISD, which shares a northeast border with Santa Fe ISD, were reported flooded or left homeless by the storm. Still, enrollment there grew by more than 2 percent over last year, according to data collected Oct. 26.
Dickinson ISD spokeswoman Tammy Dowdy said much of the growth in the district came from expanding and new housing developments, which continued undeterred after much of the region was swamped by floodwaters.
“We’ve been growing every year for years,” Dowdy said. “It’s not anything out of the norm for us.”
Of six school districts in Santa Fe ISD’s immediate area, only Texas City ISD saw a decline in enrollment, losing about 209 students, or about 2.4 percent of its 2017-2018 enrollment. Enrollment in flooded Friendswood ISD remained the same as it did last year, and student populations grew between 0.3 percent and 4.4 percent in nearby Clear Creek, Hitchcock and Alvin ISDs.
Hitchcock did see a large percentage decrease in students between 2016-2017 and 2017-2018, with enrollments dropping by about 4.2 percent. However, because the district serves fewer than 1,700, the 4.2 percent decline equates to a decrease of 72 students.
Santa Fe ISD officials concede that the May massacre at the high school may have had a noticeable impact on this year’s enrollment numbers.
“We understand that families in our community are going through a very difficult healing and recovery process, and it will continue to take a very long time to work through these traumatic experiences and rebuild their lives,” Hanssard said. “Parents must make the best decisions for their students, and we support them in doing so.”
Fewer state dollars
Santa Fe ISD’s decrease in students could have lingering effects on the district’s budget because the state distributes its share of public school funding on a perstudent basis. In other words, fewer students attending classes means fewer state dollars.
Funds in Santa Fe already are tight after the school board approved a series of costly security measures in the wake of the shooting. In all, officials have spent more than $2.1 million of the district’s own tax dollars on emergency renovations and an overhaul of security infrastructure. That is equal to more than 5 percent of the district’s annual budget and on top of the more than $1.5 million it received from federal and state grants to pay for additional mental health and security resources.
J.R. “Rusty” Norman, Santa Fe ISD’s school board president, said he is concerned any time enrollment is down. Still, he said the district is more concerned with helping students heal than enrollment figures and funding questions.
“As far as comparing the enrollment for Santa Fe ISD or Santa Fe High School with other communities that have experienced traumatic events such as ours did on May 18, there are many factors that play into how parents respond to assist their children to rebuild their lives and we don’t believe such a comparison can be made,” Norman said. “Our first priority is the healing and recovery of our students and their families.”
However, Hammond said she has been disillusioned by the district’s response to the massacre, beginning with the decision to bring students back about a week after the shooting. Hammond said it was too soon.
She also criticized the placement of the school’s new suite of counselors’ offices, which are feet from the now closed-off art classrooms where the shooting happened, as well as crimson red accent tiles an architectural firm selected to dot the renovated hallways in the affected part of the building. School and construction officials said given limited space on campus, it was hard to put the counseling offices elsewhere, and that counselors could meet with students in other parts of the building. They added that the accent tiles were chosen due to time constraints and product availability. No parents attended the June 25 workshop where options for emergency renovations were discussed, and there were few, if any, objections to the proposed renovations before the board voted to approve the changes in early July.
Still, Hammond said, the board and district officials should have known better.
“Name me another school that has had a mass shooting they would put the counselor offices in the same area where the shooting happened — where they didn’t tear the whole school down or the entire section down. Name me another school where they laid blood-looking tile down where it happened,” Hammond said. “It’s torture.”