It was an emotional end to the school year at three different Paradise Valley Unified schools in May. The district’s governing board voted to close down schools to save money as enrollment continued declining.
It’s a trend ABC15 has followed as more and more school districts in cities are seeing declining enrollment.
“It's really all about demographics and housing turnover rates,” said Rick Brammer, a principal manager at Applied Economics. For years, Brammer has studied demographic changes to help districts with planning.
He said there are a few key factors as to why a lot of districts are seeing a decline in enrollment.
One is a declining birth rate: “If you look back at 2006, there were over 102,000 live births in the state of Arizona and last year there was 78,000, meanwhile population has grown substantially,” Brammer said.
Another is that families now have school choice. There are more charter schools than ever that families can choose from, and then the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts program went universal, allowing all Arizona students to have public funds to go to any school they want, including private schools.
As of May 28, the Arizona Department of Education’s website shows more than 75,000 students enrolled in ESA. That number was at around 11,000 before it expanded.
Brammer said the impact universal ESAs has on public schools at this point is still a bit too early to tell.
“The data is not quite complete, what we do know early on: a lot of people who took those or started those accounts were already in private schools,” Brammer said. “The impact on district schools and even charter schools wasn’t as great. That’s changing now.”
Paradise Valley School officials said they’re dealing with a few different factors in their area that contribute to the declining enrollment. Including those mentioned above, Paradise Valley also has an aging population and a lack of affordable housing.
Many other districts are continuing to see a decline in enrollment including Mesa Public Schools, Tempe districts and more.
Data from the Arizona Department of Education shows enrollment in district and charter schools grew from just over one million students in 2010 to a peak of 1.15 million in 2019. Since then enrollments have been on a steady decline, with the most recent count this past October showing about 1.1 million students.
The downtrend is being driven by a drop in younger students. Prior to the 2016 school year K through third graders outnumbered Valley high school students but that is no longer the case. Enrollment of high school students has increased 15% since 2010 and K-3 is down nearly 7%.
The six largest school districts in the Valley are all seeing enrollment declines compared to five years ago. Mesa Unified, the largest district in the state, is down over five thousand students. Chandler, Peoria, Gilbert, and Deer Valley are down between one and two thousand. The hardest hit of the large districts is Paradise Valley with a total enrollment of just under 28,000 students, which is a drop of 3,110 since the 2018 school year.
The Valley is still growing in some places and many districts are still reporting rising student populations. Queen Creek Unified outpaced all other school districts by wide margins. Growing over 6,000 students in the past five years. While the remaining districts are still located in suburban regions, three of the remaining four are Union High School districts.
The Queen Creek district has been asking for a bond for years, which continues to fail among its voters. But Brammer said even with the rapid growth in that area or others, its growth and building of schools is not at the rate like it was years ago compared to other districts.
“I think Queen Creek is at the tail end of its major growth cycle,” he said. “If you think about it, Queen Creek grew during a time of choice. So, they never overbuilt their schools. Charters were always part of the fabric. They were part of the solution. They were part of the delivery mechanism.”
He added that public school districts are at a competitive disadvantage in terms of growth. For example, in an area of Apache Junction, Brammer said it’s growing, and while it would be part of the Apache Junction Unified School District, its schools are far from the area. However, a charter school has already planned a location there.
“By the time the district is able to react — because they only get funded once the kids are there — by the time the district’s able to react, the charter will already be there. That’s been the pattern that we’ve seen more and more of,” he said.
So, what could the future of public education and its enrollment look like?
“I think more districts are going to have to consider ways to [be] more efficient with the populations they’re serving,” he said. “I think they’ve all come to the realization that it’s probably not going to increase so they’ll have to be as focused on the students they’re serving as they can be.”