Wake schools enrollment stays below pre-pandemic levels, losing students to homeschooling and attendance violations

The Wake County Public School System continues to lose students, and officials expect that to continue long after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The enrollment drop from pre-pandemic levels means the school system could lose millions of dollars in state and federal funding that’s based on enrollment.

The school system presented its findings to the county school board’s facilities committee Wednesday.

They showed enrollment rose by less than 200 students from last year and remained almost 3,000 students below the 162,000 students enrolled during the 2019-20 school year. At the same time, 4,352 more students enrolled in home, charter or private schools.

Homeschool enrollment will continue, and three new charter schools opening next year will contribute to lower enrollment, according to a Carolina Demography report compiled for the school system.

“Many families have become more involved in the day-to-day education of their children during the COVID-19 pandemic, which may change their expectations of public education,” the report reads. “These changing expectations may lead families to choose nonpublic instruction in the future unless public instruction adapts to these new expectations of greater flexibility and individualized instruction.”

Some parents were frustrated with remote learning last year and have since grown frustrated with health protocols and mask mandates for in-person learning. Some have said they were frustrated with the education they watched or overhead during remote learning.

About half of the district’s schools had A or B performance grades during the last assessment, and all but 31 of 181 schools had at least a C grade. Almost two-thirds of schools met state growth expectations.

Board members on Wednesday asked to further figure out why parents might opt for charter schools and noted changes in enrollment — whether related to settlement patterns or charter schools — will impact student assignment.

Board Member Roxie Cash noted marketing for charter schools often promotes facilities, the impact of which could vary across the school district.

“It would be good to see how that’s impacting us in market share,” Cash said.

District officials said they would look into gathering the information; it already surveys parents who opt for charter schools.

The board and school district have favored magnet schools as a way to appeal to more parents, though enrollment in them has recently declined. On Wednesday, board members did not propose solutions to the enrollment decline before discussion closed for the next agenda item, but the decline in the district’s market share of Wake County’s school-aged children has been occurring for years.

Charter school growth has captured a greater share of Wake County’s school-aged children for years. The school system’s enrollment, however, had continued to grow as the county’s overall population rapidly grew.

That changed after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, as parents opted for homeschooling amid uncertainty about school delivery or other schools that promised in-person learning.

The state uses average “membership” during the second month of the school year to measure funding changes. During the 2019-20 school year, the second month membership was 161,907 students. During the 2020-21 school year, it was 157,673 students. During the second month of this year, it was 158,760 students.

While that’s a single-year growth of more than 1,000 students, it remains 1.9% below pre-pandemic levels.

The district had projected enrolling 160,591 students this fall.

The district contends the membership count is an undercount of a couple hundred students more than usual. Typically, the district has about 138 students not counted in membership because of attendance violations. That means they missed at least 10 days in a row.

This year, the district estimates it has 442 students not counted because of attendance violations.

Attendance violations spiked during the pandemic and have only partially improved as in-person instruction has returned.

Statewide, public school enrollment is below pre-pandemic levels, with only about a 0.9% increase from last year. Growth in the Wake County Public School System was just 0.7%.

Where students are going

Wake County private schools enrolled 290 more students last year — the first full year of the pandemic — than the year before that, which the pandemic began in the final quarter of the year. That was just a 1.5% enrollment growth for Wake County private schools.

But 2,772 more Wake County children were enrolled in home schools last year than the year before, a 20.4% increase.

Charter school enrollment grew by 1,290 students, an 8.9% increase.

The Wake County Public School System new enrolls only about three-quarters of the county’s school-aged children.

The COVID-19 pandemic’s toll on public schools included unprecedented growth in private and home schools.

Enrollment in non-public schools rose by more than 34,000 last year, more than doubling the recent pace of growth. Last year, 1 in 6 North Carolina K-12 students enrolled in a home or private schools, as non-public enrollment now totals nearly 300,000 students. The year before that, 1 in 7 was enrolled in a non-public school.

Parents for Educational Freedom in NC, a school choice group, says the pandemic caused a lot of uncertainty that pushed parents toward other means of educating their children. And private schools offered more in-person learning last year.

As for public schools, enrollment dropped by 52,000 students last year, more than the 34,000 student increase in non-public school enrollment. It was driven by a sizable drop in kindergarten students that has somewhat rebounded this year.

Kindergarten enrollment has risen sharply this fall, while first-grade enrollment is now less than it was the year before. Combined, enrollment in kindergarten and first grade is higher than last year, both statewide and in Wake County, though still lower than before the pandemic.

Potential funding implications

The drop in Wake County Public School System enrollment could lead to a drop in funding for the school system.

State and federal funding is mostly tied to enrollment or demographics of students enrolled.

The North Carolina General Assembly has paused funding adjustments based on enrollment during the COVID-19 pandemic, but only though the rest of this year.

During the 2019-20 school year, the district received $6,155.16 per student from the state and $600.93 per student from the federal government.

A loss of 3,147 students would result in, roughly, a loss of $19.4 million from the state and, roughly, a loss of $1.9 million from the federal government.

Not all funds are appropriated per student, and some funds are given in disproportionately greater amounts per lower-income student.

Those are relatively small portions of the district’s overall budget of $1.6 billion.

The cuts likely would be to teachers, resulting in a potential loss of hundreds of teachers.

Carolina Demography projects the Wake County Public School System will return to pre-pandemic enrollment levels by fall 2030, with steady gains beginning in fall 2026.

While birth rates decline nationwide, the group expects small increases in births in Wake County as its population grows. That will be the driving force of the district’s enrollment gains.