Data Shows School of Choice Numbers by District Across Oakland County
(Kurt Metzger, May 7, 2023)
Oakland County, MI – School of Choice (SoC) was introduced in Michigan in 1996.
School of choice basically means a school district has decided to accept students from outside the district’s typical boundaries. It’s up to the districts to decide whether they offer this option.
In Michigan, school of choice can mean a couple things, as there are multiple forms of choice. Districts can accept students who live in other districts, but within the same intermediate school district (ISD). An example would be if a student from one Oakland County city wanted to attend school in another Oakland County district, which both fall within the same ISD. A district can also allow students from another ISD to enroll in a school sharing a border with their district’s ISD. An example would be if a student from Sterling Heights (Macomb ISD) wanted to attend the Troy Public Schools.
Schools can choose to participate in one or both. These programs can be unlimited in the number of students it accepts, or a district may only have a small number of openings. They can limit the number of seats by grade, by program or by building. Many school districts that have experienced enrollment loss due to demographic change (aging population; lower birth rates; out-migration) have embraced schools of choice as a way of maintaining enrollment levels by pulling in students from other districts through active recruitment programs.
In my last article I analyzed pre- and post-pandemic (Fall 2019 vs Fall 2022) enrollment change. The following charts and text look at how School of Choice patterns across the 28 Oakland County public school districts are affecting enrollment.
Twenty-two of the 28 districts have found SoC students beneficial to the bottom line – ranging from 153 in the Holly district to 1,940 in Oak Park. Three districts – Rochester, Novi and Birmingham – had no choice students, by choice. Bloomfield Hills allowed for only 5 SoC students, while Pontiac Schools could only attract 3.
Figure 1 illustrates those districts where SoC students represent 25 percent or more of the total Fall 2022 enrollment. Here we see that more than half of the student bodies in both the Madison and Oak Park districts (with Clarenceville almost there) live outside the district. Every school day, 1,056 resident K-12 students leave Oak Park to study. The largest contingent – 405 – travel next door to Ferndale, while Berkley, Southfield and Royal Oak are also popular. As these students leave the district, 1,940 non-district students (1,592 from Detroit) arrive. The result is a gain of 840 students for a district with a total enrollment of 3,646.
The Oak Park illustration points out the other side of the SoC equation – the fact that SoC works both ways, students come into a district and students leave for other districts. Figure 2 shows the districts with the highest numbers of students leaving for other districts. Three districts actually surpass Oak Park in the number of resident students who go elsewhere for school. Pontiac, at 3,073, almost doubles second place Southfield (1,556), followed by Waterford at 1,072.
The complete picture is presented in the final chart. Here summary data on SoC and enrollment numbers are presented for all districts. Please remember that we are only looking at Public School District figures (along with Public Charters). As we all know, districts also lose resident students to private and parochial schools in numbers we are unable to track.
According to recent population forecasts from the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG), the 2020 K-12 school-age population (5-17 years) in Oakland County was the largest it will be through 2050. This means that the 28 public school districts in the county, 12 of which have less than 4,000 students, will continue to compete with each other, with public and private charters, with parochial and private schools, and with the continue threat of an education voucher program for a static, or slightly decreasing, total student base. Will this lead to possible district consolidations (Clawson tried to merge with Troy but was rejected) or just more and more advertising?
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!