The Austin Independent School District has lost 5,119 students this year, according to enrollment numbers presented at a board meeting September 28.
AISD’s Chief Business Officer Larry Throm reported the numbers, saying the drop in attendance could cost the district $48.8 million in state funding if the situation doesn’t improve.
“We don’t want to alarm anybody, but these are facts. We will wait to see in another two weeks or week. We are taking attendance daily to see if we can improve on these numbers.”
Throm added that one way to save money would be to lay off teachers and staff. But even cutting 232 teachers and staff would cover only $30 million of the roughly $50 million shortfall, he estimated.
Later in the week, Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde downplayed the possibility of layoffs in an interview with a local TV station, saying that there would be “cuts,” but personnel changes would be the last option: “We will wait until the very end for it to ever be people.”
A presentation shown at the board meeting indicated that the decline stems mostly from prekindergarten (-2,718) and elementary school (-4,836). Those numbers represent the difference in enrollment between the 14th school day in 2020, September 25, and the 14th school day in 2019, September 9.
A couple of factors could be driving the decline.
One factor is competition from publicly funded charter schools, which have offered in-class instruction earlier than AISD, in some cases as early as August, compared to AISD’s October 5 start date. That appeals to working parents who have struggled with the burden of childcare during the pandemic.
Still other parents simply might be postponing introducing a child to prekindergarten, as a precaution against spreading the coronavirus. “If you have a four or five year old and you’ve been doing day care you’re probably not in a hurry to put your pre-K or kindergarten student in a classroom,” commented one AISD parent.
Another factor is the divisive ‘school changes’ process last year, which resulted in the closure of four elementary schools, alienating parents who had fought to keep the schools upon.
Some families have opted not to take the district up on transfer options provided in the new school year. “I can easily think of a dozen Pease Elementary families, at a minimum, who left the district because of the closure,” said an AISD parent, Laura Gupton.
“Many more are actively on waiting lists to leave. There is no trust in Austin ISD after last year.”
Other parents were alienated by a controversial health education curriculum approved last year. At an October 2019 board meeting, critics espousing traditional values warned of an “Hispanic exodus” from the district, after Hispanic church leaders took a stand against the curriculum.
A majority of the district students are Hispanic.
However, if that is a dynamic in the current enrollment drop, it appears to be a secondary factor, compared to the pandemic; this year’s middle school enrollment is mostly steady, with a drop of just 298, and high school enrollment has actually risen by 289.
Younger children tend to have less familiarity with connective technologies and some have simply dropped off the map. If parents aren’t on hand to correct a problem, then the district could lose track of a child.
Since AISD is still in remote-learning mode, enrollment numbers could reflect an uptick in October, when students return to the classroom. According to Elizalde, the superintendent, AISD isn’t the only school district in Texas facing the same problem.
