Wake schools lost enrollment in pandemic. Planners don’t expect kids to return soon.
The Wake County school system has shrunk by about 3,000 students during the COVID-19 pandemic and, according to planners, enrollment may not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2030.
Since the 2019-20 school year, Wake County school enrollment has dropped at the same time it has increased in charter schools, private schools and home-schools. New long-range enrollment projections that were presented on Wednesday say it’s expected that those families will stay in those alternatives to traditional public schools.
“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,” Carolina Demography, a consultant on Wake’s enrollment projections, wrote in its report.
“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.”
The new long-range enrollment projections will be used to help develop annual operating budgets for the school system and the county’s multi-year school building and renovation program.
But the pandemic has made the accuracy of the projections less certain
“The global pandemic caused by COVID-19 is an unprecedented event with no equivalent historical point of reference,” according to the memo from the forecast team of school and county planners. “We saw significant disruptions to trends at the start of the 2020-21 school year and these disruptions have continued through 2021-22.
“Our understanding of the results of these disruptions for the near-term and longer-term remains limited.”
District loses students during pandemic
Wake County is North Carolina’s largest school system, reaching a peak of 161,907 students in the 2019-20 school year. Wake used to grow by thousands of students each year.
But enrollment fell sharply in Wake County, the state’s other school districts and public schools nationwide during the 2020-21 school year. Enrollment is up in Wake and overall in the state’s traditional public schools this school year, but it’s still below what it was before the pandemic.
Wake average daily membership this school year is 158,760 students — 3,237 students below the pre-pandemic high. Wake says the enrollment would be 159,066 students when you include some pupils not counted in the state’s system due to missing too many days of classes.
Much of this year’s growth is due to a large increase in the number of high school freshmen. Carolina Demography says that may be due to large numbers of ninth-graders who were required to repeat the grade level.
District loses market share
While district enrollment is down from the 2019-20 school year, it’s the opposite for the county’s other education choices. Charter school enrollment went up last school year and is up 1,290 students, or 8.9%, this school year.
This school year’s figures aren’t in yet, but enrollment went up 20.4% last school year for homeschoolers and 1.5% for private schools.
Some families opted for private schools and charter schools because they, on average, were quicker to return to in-person instruction and were more likely to not require face masks. The school system still requires face coverings to be worn by students.
“The flexibility that families feel they achieve under these traditional public school alternatives may lead these trends to stay or intensify,” according to Carolina Demography.
Over the past decade, the school system’s market share — the percentage of Wake County students attending district schools — has sharply dropped. It was at 83% in 2012 and was down to 76% last school year.
“If this growth in charter schools is accompanied by continued high utilization of home school and private school options, WCPSS market share may continue to decline,” according to Carolina Demography.
More children being born in Wake
For next school year, planners project the district’s enrollment will grow by 476 students. This would still leave the district below pre-pandemic levels.
The new projections have the district growing slightly until 2025, when there’s a sharp decline due to fewer children having been born in 2020 and the current large ninth-grade class aging out.
But based on 2021 numbers, planners project that there will be an increase in the number of children being born in Wake County in the next few years. This would lead to enrollment reaching a new record high of 163,339 students in 2030.
But many uncertainties remain, such as will next school year be a true return to “normal” and will families continue to make other school choices after the pandemic.
“In any year, there are challenges in making projections, but last year and this year have been particularly challenging due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to Carolina Demography. “It is very hard to predict the response coming out of the pandemic, and we may see continued flux well into the 2022-23 school year and beyond.”
This story was originally published February 9, 2022 at 7:30 AM.
