Data Shows Enrollment Down in Every Oakland County School District, Except for Clarkston
(Kurt Metzger, April 27, 2023)
Oakland County, MI – Last year I wrote a column on the effects of the pandemic on student enrollment across Oakland County’s K-12 public school districts. I pointed out that school district budgets are highly dependent on the per student funding that comes from the state, and that, while much discussion focuses on the “per student allocation,” and the folks in Lansing congratulate themselves when they are able to increase it by any amount, school districts must focus on forecast their total enrollment in order to develop the next year’s budget.
I stated that “forecasting enrollment for the 2022-23 school year looks to be quite a challenge, based on the effects of a decreasing student base and parental decisions driven by the pandemic. As school districts prepare for the fall, the question of student enrollment numbers is one that each will be reckoning with. There is the potential that some students who were home schooled last year, or shifted to charter, private or religious-based schools will come back to public schools. I doubt that these numbers are large enough to stem the losses. It is therefore clear that we can expect to see school districts running adds like never before to convince both in-district students and out-of-district to attend their schools. The only prediction I can make is that the vast majority of districts in the county need to continue to budget based on a continuation of decreased enrollment.”
Last week the state released the Fall 2022-23 enrollment numbers – the first, truly post-pandemic numbers that we have seen. In order to understand the effects of an aging population, low birth rates, and out-migration, combined with pandemic-related parental decisions, I decided to analyze enrollment changes between Fall 2019 and Fall 2022 for school districts across the county.
Of the 28 public districts in the county, the only one to gain students was Clarkston which added 10. An additional three districts lost 1 percent or less of their students – Ferndale (-10), Novi (-29) and Avondale (-39). Six districts have experienced double-digit percentage losses, with enrollments decreasing between 194 (-13.4%) in Clawson and 1,106 (-13.7%) in Waterford. The highest percentage losses have occurred in the Madison (-19.5%), Oak Park (-16.8%) and Pontiac (-14.7%) districts. The largest numeric losses were experienced by Walled Lake (-1,270), Waterford (-1,106) and Huron Valley (-862). The total student loss across all districts was 11,052.
Figure 1 shows the eleven county school districts with percentage losses of 9 percent or more.
Charter schools did not fare as poorly as public-school districts. A total of 22 Oakland County public charter schools are tracked by Michigan’s Center for Educational Performance and Information (CEPI). Nine of the twenty-two experienced enrollment increases, while thirteen reflected the fate of the public districts. The total change in students was a loss of 678 students across the twenty-two. The largest loss – 302 students/23.6%) was experienced by The Bradford Academy, a K-12 public charter in Southfield.
The top growth schools were the following: (1) Faxon Academy (K-8 in Southfield) up 67.6%; (2) Oakside Prep Academy (K-11 in Waterford) up 49.2% (302 students); (3) Great Lakes Academy (K-8 in Pontiac) up 18.8%; (4) Kingsbury Country Day (K-8 in Oxford) up 10.6% (5) Waterford Montessori (K-8 in Waterford) up 8.4%; and, (6) AGBU Alex-Marie Manoogian School (K-12 in Southfield) up 7.9%.
For more stories about the Census and other interesting numbers, visit the Data-Base Stories Archives on Oakland County Times. Thanks to Data Expert Kurt Metzger for this work!