TWO MONTHS into the new school year, some communities are beginning to report enrollment declines, presumably an offshoot of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Worcester school district lost 1,046 students, about 4.2 percent of last year’s total of 25,049, according to the Telegram & Gazette. It was the second year in a row that enrollment declined, and a large chunk of the decrease was at the prekindergarten and kindergarten levels.
Brian Allen, Worcester’s chief financial and operations officer, said more families have elected to keep younger students out of school during the coronavirus pandemic.
The drop could significantly impact the amount of state aid Worcester’s schools can expect, with a $10 million decrease in school aid possible next fiscal year under the state’s foundation formula.
The trend of younger students staying home and out of school could be a statewide phenomenon, according to Tracy O’Connell Novick, a member of the Worcester School Committee.
“They (the state) really need to see this as a massive aberration,” she said. “Essentially what we’re seeing is parents with little kids saying ‘this is not the year for us to do this,’ which I understand.”
In Lynn, a different set of issues has kept 743 public school students from logging on at all for remote learning. Sheila O’Neil, president of the Lynn Teachers Union, told MassLive that those students appear to include many second-language students, some of whom have moved. The district has sent registered letters and tried phone calls and emails to reach the parents.
The district hasn’t rolled out official enrollment numbers, but the attendance rates may be an indicator. Attendance rates have been 96 percent this year, O’Neil said, which translates to 15,009 of 15,752 students signing on for class.
Districts calculate their official enrollment counts on October 1, but it takes time to process the data and make sure students aren’t counted twice and figures for English-language learners are correct. The statistics are ultimately reported to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
“My past experience is that the department posts those numbers later this month, once all the districts are in, and they’ve reconciled the differences around students who have moved and so forth,” Worcester School Committee member Tracy Novick told CommonWealth. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education said Thursday that it will release its data on November 24.
The state’s shutdown of schools last spring when the pandemic hit likely is contributing to the dropoff in public school enrollment. Gov. Charlie Baker earlier this week, at a press conference announcing a series of measures to halt the spread of COVID-19, said he didn’t want to shut down schools again.
“Everybody’s concluded that closing schools last spring was probably a bad idea, okay?” Baker said. “And the basic message that’s coming out from most people this time is, schools aren’t spreaders, and it’s hugely important for the educational and social development of kids — and the psychological development of kids — that they be in school.”