Empty feeling
Thanks to COVID-19, public school enrollment saw a historic drop, but many expect a fall rebound
All but one of Oakland County’s 28 public school districts saw a drop in enrollment during the 20202021 academic year, one riddled with significant challenges as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But Carolyn Claerhout, Oakland Schools pupil services manager, is anticipating enrollment numbers to return to more normal levels this fall with the majority of students enrolled for in-person instruction, five days per week.
Claerhout said that school districts across the county are going to see a “very large” increase in kindergarten or firstgrade enrollment compared to last year.
“I think there were a lot of families who made the decision to just delay kindergarten a year,” she said. “It is not a required year of school. I think a lot of parents said ‘we’re just going to hold off on kindergarten’ rather than kindergarten being a virtual experience or an experience that was not set in stone because we would open and close the schools.”
Last year, however, Oakland County had 6,038 fewer students in its public schools, of which the largest portion were kindergarteners, a trend that continued at the state level.
In Oakland County, 29 percent of the enrollment decline, or 1,715 students, was among kindergartners with parents choosing to either homeschool or hold their children back a year, putting them in child care instead.
If public school enrollment does not recover to the level that many school administrators are anticipating, schools could eventually see funding cuts down the road, though federal pandemic relief money is boosting budgets for now with Michigan receiving $3.7 billion in K-12 funding from the American Rescue Plan, which was signed by President Biden in March.
At this point, it’s unclear where all
6,038 students were taught, if at all, in 2020-2021. The most likely scenarios include either homeschool, private school, or a delay in kindergarten enrollment.
Oakland County’s 79 private schools bucked the public school numbers and saw a 10.7 percent enrollment increase last school year — from 19,943 to 22,082 — with the number of state registered/approved homeschool sites increasing by over 400 percent. Statewide private school enrollment increased by 874 students from 101,726 to 102,600, the second-lowest enrollment number in 10 years (2019-2020).
Still, it remains unclear exactly how many students those private schools absorbed.
With public schools switching back and forth between remote and in person learning options throughout the pandemic, Claerhout said she was expecting private school enrollment to jump with inperson learning being the primary option for most of the 2020-2021 school year, which seemed to be a way for parents to avoid uncertainty.
Some Oakland County school districts that saw the biggest declines included the Waterford School District, which lost 789 students, a decline of nearly 10%, and the Oak Park School District, which lost 611 students, a decline of nearly 14%.
According to a first-ofits-kind analysis by Chalkbeat and The Associated Press, enrollment declines varied by student race and ethnicity. Enrollment in preschool to 12th grade dropped by 2.6% across 41 states last fall, and the decline was steepest among white students, whose enrollment fell more than 4%.
White families’ decisions seemed especially swayed by whether their child’s public school offered in-person learning. States where more students were learning fully virtually tended to see larger declines among white students.
Meanwhile, the nation’s Hispanic student population saw the biggest shift from pre-pandemic trends, with enrollment dipping 1.5% last fall — a significant change, given that Hispanic students had been the country’s fastest-growing student group. That could be tied to some of the disruptions Hispanic families experienced during the pandemic, including higher rates of job losses and higher rates of death and hospitalization from COVID-19.
The data underscores the complicated task ahead for schools trying to reconnect with families who left public schools for different reasons and ended up at a wide range of alternatives.
“Districts might have this kind of ‘different strokes for different folks’ policy,” said Richard Welsh, an associate professor at New York University who’s studied student mobility. “‘We’re open for business and we’re committed to in-person learning’ could be more targeted to white families.”
On the flip side, Welsh said, “when you have districts that are giving tours about their safety protocols, those might be targeted more to their Black and Latino families” whose communities were hit harder by the pandemic.
Homeschool option
Although the exact number of students enrolled in private and public school is known, that number who were homeschooled is not known because parents are not required to register with the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) or their local school district.
“A full picture of homeschooling in Michigan can’t be provided because of the optional registration law,” said Bill Disessa, MDE spokesperson. “However, we do track optional registrations. The MDE does not collect student-level data for homeschools.”
Disessa said parents are required to register if the homeschooled student is requesting eligible special education services from the local public school or intermediate school district.
To be approved as a homeschool, the parent/legal guardian must either possess a minimum of a bachelor’s degree or state an objection to teacher certification in accordance with People v DeJonge, per the Teacher Requirement section of the state’s Revised School Code. If they do not meet one of those state standards, they are classified as registered.
The Oakland Press was able to obtain the number of optional homeschool registrations for Oakland County. Although the number is not exact, it does show a noticeable trend.
Compared to the 20192020 school year, the number of homeschool sites registered/approved in Oakland County increased from 21 to 92. Statewide, the number of registered/ approved homeschool sites jumped from 581 to 1,494.
Private school changes
Although the overall number of private school enrollment increased significantly across the county, it’s the private catholic schools that saw declines in enrollment.
The National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) , the organization overseeing U.S. Catholic schools, recently named Lincoln Snyder its new president and CEO as it seeks to rebound from its biggest one-year enrollment drop since the 1970s. Nationwide, total enrollment was about 1.63 million, down from a peak of more than 5.2 million in the early 1960s.
In Oakland County, three of the largest Catholic high schools — Detroit Catholic Central in Wixom, Brother Rice High School in Bloomfield Hills, and Mercy High School in Farmington Hills — saw enrollment declines of 6.3% from 997 to 934 , 9.4% from 571 to 517, and 6.3% from 696 to 652 respectively.
Nationwide, more than 200 Catholic schools closed permanently and enrollment at the 5,981 remaining schools fell by 6.4% — or more than 111,000 students — for the 2020-2021 academic year, according to the NCEA. Total enrollment was about 1.63 million, down from a peak of more than 5.2 million in the early 1960s.
Snyder is cautiously optimistic that many Catholic schools nationwide can slow or stop the enrollment decline in the coming year. He said that economic hardships caused by the pandemic forced some families to pull their children out of Catholic schools because they couldn’t afford the tuition.
Looking ahead
As many parents across the U.S. weigh the same concerns, school districts that lost enrollment during the pandemic are looking anxiously to the fall to see how many families stick with the education choices they made over the last year.
The reality is that even as public schools open back up to full in-person learning this fall, some families may stick with private schools. Families might also continue to homeschool their children.
Regardless, districts are now ramping up their recruitment efforts, hoping to build on the small upticks they saw over the last few months as in-person learning became more widely available, including launching new efforts to connect with families with young children.
Lori Grein, spokeswoman for Rochester Community Schools, the largest school district in Oakland County, said the district saw an enrollment decline of 425 students from 15,412 to 14,987, or 2.7%.
Grein said the district is working to increase and retain as many students as possible by continuing to reimagine learning and adapt to the needs of families. That includes continuing the district’s K-12 Virtual Campus through the 2021-2022 school year, giving parents the option of being fully remote if concerns still remain about the pandemic.
To support the district’s youngest learners, Rochester Community Schools will continue offering a Transitional Kindergarten program to help meet the varying educational and social-emotional needs of the district’s five-year-old students.
“The district continues to monitor enrollment on a daily basis. Currently, Rochester Community Schools has 1,146 new enrollments for the 2021-22 school year,” she said. “However, until the state budget is passed by legislature and per pupil funding calculations are determined for the 2021-22 school year, the environment remains volatile and unpredictable.”
Doug Pratt, spokesperson for the Michigan Education Association, said it will be important to bring as many students back into formal public education settings as possible.
“Now, there are other opportunities out there for parents that may be taking advantage of during the pandemic, but we believe that most students are going to return to in-person public education this fall as a way that fits best for them.”
Funding changes
Recently, the Michigan Senate approved the state’s fiscal year 2022 School Aid budget, which was signed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
The state’s K-12 school budget will provide around $17 billion in support, a historic investment that includes:
• Increasing the per-pupil foundation allowance to $8,700 per student for all districts
• $1.7 billion for chronically underfunded special education programs
• Additional $560 million to reduce teacher pension debt
• Additional $168 million for the Great Start Readiness Program, the statefunded preschool program for four-year-old children, to ensure 22,000 additional children can enroll in early education.
• The budget provides an additional $589 per student (up 7 percent) for districts currently at the minimum foundation allowance, and an additional $171 (up 2 percent) for schools now at the maximum foundation allowance.