Bob Templeton has spent close to three decades thinking about the connections between population trends and public school enrollment. The job has become more difficult than ever.
In fast-growing Texas, where Templeton is based, overall enrollment in public schools had been rising by up to 60,000 students a year before the pandemic. Since then, that growth has slowed considerably. Last year, K-12 enrollment increased by only 12,000 students, even as the state鈥檚 overall population grew faster than most other states鈥�.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 when I saw the data and went, 鈥榃ow, there鈥檚 something going on here,鈥欌�� Templeton said.
Templeton鈥檚 job is to help school districts find out what that something is, and guide them on how to respond. He serves as vice president of the school segment of the Texas-based firm Zonda.
The company contracts with school districts in Texas and other states to provide enrollment projections and demographic analyses that help school systems prepare for their future needs, including new construction, building closures, revised boundaries, and staffing adjustments. Those analyses draw on Zonda鈥檚 robust database of new housing construction across the United States.
Enrollment declines have become a hot topic and increasingly common reality for school district leaders nationwide. Districts have faced additional competition in recent years due to the proliferation of charter schools and the expansion of state-funded private school choice programs. Declining birth rates portend a smaller number of children who will be attending school in the coming years. And a small segment of students have fallen off schools鈥� radars since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
When schools lose enrollment, they also lose funding, even when costs like utilities and staff compensation remain fixed. Most states calculate school funding based in part on the number of students districts enroll. And overall population declines translate to lower collections of local property taxes, which contribute another significant chunk of most K-12 district budgets.
Education Week interviewed Templeton by phone last month for his analysis of current enrollment trends. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
When a school district contracts with your firm and wants help figuring out enrollment patterns, how do you start?
For 70 percent or 80 percent, it鈥檚 a routine. We鈥檙e working with those fast-growth districts, in suburban communities where they鈥檙e literally building hundreds if not thousands of homes a year. These school districts are needing to plan when and where to have bond elections, build schools, open schools. We help them with the logistics of, how do you draw attendance boundaries, and shift the zones to accommodate the new buildings?
We do have those that are the urban districts that are declining in enrollment. We鈥檙e doing the opposite there. We are helping them figure out how to close schools. Ten years ago, we might have done one to two of those projects every three or four years. This year, I believe we did six of those projects. I think now going forward it鈥檚 going to be a regular yearly event.
How difficult is it to predict what enrollment will look like in a particular school district, or region, or state?
In the past it鈥檚 been very predictable to understand the school enrollment growth as it relates to housing. We could get within 1 percent of forecasting enrollment change because the connection was so strong. We noticed about seven to eight years ago, the connections started to slip. It wasn鈥檛 as tightly correlated as we had seen.
It鈥檚 definitely making our job more difficult. It鈥檚 now slipped into a 2-3 percent range. We鈥檙e wrestling with, how do we improve our modeling based on what we鈥檙e seeing?
It鈥檚 almost been the perfect storm over the last four years. Really, the pandemic ushered in this wave of change.
What I鈥檓 finding that we end up doing now is, the school year starts, the enrollment comes in, and let鈥檚 say we鈥檙e off by 400 or 500 kids. The question is, what happened? We鈥檙e doing our detective work, and we鈥檙e trying to decide, did they leave because of a problem within the district, or is it because of a new offering, or did the neighboring school district change its policy around transfers?
It鈥檚 almost like playing a game of chess. The school year starts, the first moves are made in terms of enrollment patterns, then districts are scrambling around: We need to open our boundaries, we need to offer programs of choice to create magnet schools, to provide more options so we can get those kids back.
What鈥檚 behind the unpredictable fluctuations?
There certainly is an impact because of the changes in birth rates. The normal yield of students per single-family house that we saw for many years has dropped.
But then what鈥檚 also happening is the choice options. Ten years ago, folks moved into a neighborhood and they looked up to see what was the elementary zone that served the neighborhood and that鈥檚 where they went. They didn鈥檛 explore and think about if they have any options.
In the last 10 years, in Texas we have seen the expansion of charter schools. And now I think the equal impact is the home school. There鈥檚 been a tremendous advance of online resources that have become available for hybrid learning, home-school learning, and now with social media and the ability to connect easily, it鈥檚 not just an individual experience even for home-schoolers now. They鈥檝e become micro-communities. They have graduations, they have proms, they do things in groups that didn鈥檛 happen 10 years ago.
What鈥檚 fueling the enthusiasm for alternative options, from what you鈥檝e seen?
It鈥檚 almost been the perfect storm over the last four years. Really, the pandemic ushered in this wave of change. Part of the change was related to flexible work arrangements, accelerating some choices for families to move to different regions.
We鈥檙e experiencing this political tension that is not like I鈥檝e ever seen. I attend and present at anywhere from 50 to 80 school board meetings a year. For some of these school districts, whatever the decisions they were making were, there were equal numbers of people displeased with the decision on both sides. I literally sat through one meeting at a school district in the Austin area, early on in the pandemic, where they were requiring masks, but there were parents that were mad about that, and then there were parents that were mad they weren鈥檛 enforcing it enough. Man, they stand no chance.
Now it鈥檚 pretty common that at every board meeting I attend, I鈥檓 going to hear three to a dozen patrons that want to address the board in public comment on a variety of topics. Ten years ago I could have counted on one hand how many board meetings I would have to listen to public comment at the beginning of the board meeting. When you did, it was about a specific incident about something that went on with their child.
Now it鈥檚 very broad around library books, about bathrooms, about a litany of topics that are politically tense. This tension is causing parents on both sides of the equation, the spectrum, to disconnect.
How are those political tensions affecting enrollment? What evidence do you have of the connection between the two?
I attended the Texas home-school conference last summer just because I was curious. I was purely attending as a fly on the wall. I had no expectation of what I was going to be walking into. There were 6,000 families that were attending. It was packed. They had a trade exhibit with vendors. They are organized, they are communicating with the masses.
I interviewed two to five couples in each session: Why are you doing this? How long do you plan to do this? What are the advantages? What are the disadvantages? What do you think of public education?
For many of them, it wasn鈥檛 about ideology, it was about choice. It was about flexibility. These were families where one of the parents didn鈥檛 work full time. They had a parent to commit a certain amount of the week to education for their child.
This tension is causing parents on both sides of the equation, the spectrum, to disconnect.
When you鈥檙e in a traditional public school structure, your preparation for the day has to start at 6, 6:30 in the morning, to wake up, get fed, get clothed, get to school. So it鈥檚 taking up a nine-hour chunk of the day, whereas the home school could be as minimal as two to four hours a day. Some folks were into environmental issues, and man, they could devote more time to those kinds of issues and were more creative. Whatever your niche is, you can find a micro- or home-school community or element to support your passion.
I do believe that it is the home school element that is having the biggest impact on public ed. enrollment drop. I think the school districts think it鈥檚 about ideology. But I think it鈥檚 more about what I鈥檓 seeing with millennials and Gen Z: They want options and they want more control.
How do you deal with the persistent lack of reliable data on homeschool enrollment?
The problem in Texas is the home-school parents do not have to report to the Texas Education Agency that they鈥檙e home-schooling. We really don鈥檛 have a good way to understand what鈥檚 happening with the home-school enrollment. During the next legislative session, Gov. [Greg] Abbott is definitely going to be promoting vouchers and choice. If there鈥檚 any money that is tied to home school as a credit, I鈥檓 hopeful that they鈥檒l need to report that they鈥檙e home-schooling to get that. Maybe we can start to see what the numbers really look like.
What else is on the horizon that could affect public school enrollment?
Homeownership is at record lows. There鈥檚 a couple of things at play around homeownership.
One of them is the cost. The cost really accelerated during the last three years because of the pandemic. There were the supply chain problems, the shortage of labor, the bureaucratic hoops that have to be jumped through to get new land deals approved. Then you layer in there the financing cost of the mortgage rates. Now they鈥檙e at 7 percent. Combined with this dramatic inflation in the cost, that鈥檚 putting homeownership out of reach for a lot of the really young buyers. A lot of millennials are hesitant to even get into that kind of commitment. They would rather rent, and have the flexibility to move.
Now we are seeing in Zonda a real explosion in the single-family, for-rent communities. It鈥檚 probably growing the fastest of any of the types of home construction. Multi-family apartments have had a pretty dominant run for a while. But now it鈥檚 this single-family, for-rent product that is really growing at a tremendous rate.
We鈥檝e seen a tremendous loss of trust in institutions. Education fits in that category. The anchors of a community used to be, you buy a home, you go to church, you attend public school, you go to the park, and you play in these city leagues. Those pillars are not there anymore.
