Enrollment stayed steady or shrank slightly in public school systems across the Washington region this academic year, suggesting schools have so far failed to rebound from pandemic-era drops — with possible repercussions for funding.
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The coronavirus pandemic led to a stark plunge in public-school enrollment nationwide, as families with resources opted for in-person learning offered by private schools or undertook home schooling. School districts in the D.C. area experienced student-body declines of between 2 and 5 percent in the 2020-21 school year, a loss of thousands of children that threatened millions of dollars in budgeting and spurred promises from educators that they would work to re-enroll students and attract new families.
The start of the 2021-22 school year, for which the overwhelming majority of public school systems in the Washington region are offering five days a week of almost-normal face-to-face schooling, marked the first big test of whether those efforts would bear fruit.
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In the nation’s capital, preliminary numbers show that public school enrollment in the growing city increased slightly, although it still lags behind projections and remains below the levels seen before the pandemic.
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In Northern Virginia, enrollment fell this year in Fairfax County Public Schools, Virginia’s largest district, and in Alexandria City Public Schools. Enrollment in Loudoun County Public Schools and Arlington Public Schools rose ever so slightly — by 138 students in Loudoun and 16 students in Arlington — but the total number of students in each of the four districts is still well below what it was before the pandemic.
In Maryland, where enrollment numbers are not yet official, preliminary figures show that the state’s two largest school systems, in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, have not rebounded, either, from significant reductions suffered last year.
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Area systems’ lost enrollment carries little immediate financial danger: U.S. school districts received an unprecedented influx of federal funds this year to help them recover from the pandemic, so they are not cash-strapped.
But if enrollment does not rebound, the long-term effects on funding remain far from clear. Some school officials predicted dire consequences, while others were more sanguine, and some said they simply did not know.
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School officials in Prince George’s — where early data show enrollment slid to 128,762 from 131,661 last year, a 2.2 percent decline — predicted a “major effect” on state and county funding. Overall enrollment and subgroup enrollment are driving components of Maryland’s largest state-funding formulas.
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School system officials added that lower enrollment counts reduce funding from state grant programs and proportionally decrease the required county contribution of local funding to the school system.
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Prince George’s schools CEO Monica Goldson will bring an operating budget proposal to the county Board of Education on Dec. 9. “At that time, the CEO will outline a full plan for addressing the budget deficit inclusive of enrollment-driven revenue decreases,” school system officials said in a statement.
In Montgomery County, preliminary figures show that student counts dropped by 1,233 students this year, to a total enrollment of 159,331. The greater drop came when the official enrollment was posted at 160,564 in fall of 2020 — down 4,703 students from a year earlier, the last year enrollment was unaffected by the pandemic. That marked a decline of nearly 3 percent.
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Before the pandemic, Montgomery’s student population surged yearly for more than a decade, with enrollment rising to a record high of 165,267 in the fall of 2019.
Chris Cram, a spokesman for the school system, said officials estimate that Montgomery schools could face a loss of $30 million in county funding because of enrollment declines. State-level funding is harder to predict, while the system does not expect to see a major federal reduction, he said. A recommended operating budget is expected in mid-December.
Cram said the shrinking number of students partly is due to some families choosing private school or home schooling during the pandemic.
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Kelli Boyd’s son can be counted among the students that Montgomery County lost amid the challenges of remote education. Boyd said she and her husband decided last fall to switch their highly social first-grade son to a private Montessori school because he struggled with learning by computer screen.
“He hated school,” she said. “He was throwing fits.”
It was a hardship financially and practically, Boyd said, but she felt her child’s mental health and love of learning were at stake.
Then, this past spring, the family faced the same decision a second time, as they looked ahead to their son’s second-grade year. Boyd said she and her husband had lost trust in the Montgomery County school system, which was slow to move to in-person learning.
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They also worried public schools had fallen so far behind private ones that, if their son returned to Montgomery classrooms, he would be bored or his learning would lag.
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“It makes me sad that it’s gone this way,” Boyd said. “We’re a public school family. I want him to be in public school.”
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In D.C., city officials announced in September that enrollment across both the traditional public and charter sectors was 90,156. That was up from 89,319 students in the 2020-21 academic year, but down from the 92,461 the year prior.
The city has not broken down enrollment for the current year based on grade level or demographics, making it hard to draw too many conclusions just yet. Unlike the surrounding jurisdictions, the District also offers two years of free prekindergarten. These earliest grades experienced notable enrollment fluctuations during the extended school closures.
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In the spring, D.C. Public Schools released initial individual school budgets, which are based on projected enrollment. Some schools lost students — more than a third saw their local budget decrease — while others experienced gains. The city also opened a few new charter schools this academic year, spreading traditional public enrollment even thinner.
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In May, amid public outcry over the individual school budget declines, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) announced that she would use federal pandemic funds to ensure no school within the DCPS lost money from the year prior, a pledge that amounted to $14 million.
'We don't know yet'
In Northern Virginia, school officials differed widely in their predictions of how enrollment changes this year will affect funding.
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Officials with Loudoun County Public Schools, where enrollment rose by .02 percent this year — from 81,504 to 81,642 students — were the most pessimistic. Loudoun’s student body totaled about 84,000 before the pandemic, and its reduction by 3 percent between 2019-20 and 2020-21 led to a loss of $15.3 million in state revenue.
The enrollment this academic year is below pre-pandemic projections, leading officials to forecast “a projected net decrease of $6.9 million in state funding,” said spokesman Wayde Byard.
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He wrote in an email that “LCPS will monitor spending during the year and expect that budgetary savings will cover the revenue reduction,” adding that “$6.9m on our $1.5b budget is less than 1 percent.”
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In Fairfax County Public Schools, enrollment dropped by 0.86 percent this year, falling to 178,595 from last year’s 180,151. It is not as dramatic a decrease as the one witnessed right after the pandemic set in, between 2019-20 and 2020-21, when the student body dropped by more than 8,700.
Spokeswoman Julie Moult wrote in an email that the school system is waiting to find out how its shrunken student body will affect its budget.
“During the pandemic, Virginia held divisions harmless from enrollment losses by providing additional funds to offset any reductions,” Moult said. “Moving forward, the Virginia General Assembly will decide whether to continue holding divisions harmless, but their next session does not begin until next year so the impact is currently unknown.”
In Alexandria City Public Schools, director of education and business applications Marya Runkle said 15,680 students had enrolled for the 2021-22 school year, representing a 1.1 percent drop from last academic year. She noted that state funding awards Alexandria roughly $1,760 per pupil, so any decline in the student body could represent a dip in state money — although city funding, by contrast, does not operate on a per-pupil formula, she said.
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“Any reduction in funding would be resolved during the budget formulation process,” Runkle said. “Currently, ACPS is not projecting a decrease in overall funding.”
Meanwhile in Arlington Public Schools, enrollment rose by about 0.1 percent, going from 26,895 to 26,911, said spokesman Frank Bellavia — still pretty far from its pre-pandemic enrollment of about 28,000.
The alterations to student enrollment will almost certainly affect funding, Bellavia said, but he said it was too soon to predict exactly how — because legislators could adjust important components of the law.
“We don’t know yet,” Bellavia said. “For instance, the state budget has not been announced yet, and the per-pupil funding could go up or down.”
Megan Khaerisman, a 36-year-old mother to three children in Arlington, is one of the many parents who chose to keep their kids in public school this year. Khaerisman is also employed by Arlington Public Schools as a social worker, she said.
But she likes Arlington, she said, and would have chosen to keep her two school-aged children — a sixth-grade son and another son who just started preschool — enrolled there even if she didn’t work for the system. Her family moved to Arlington from Prince George’s County specifically for the quality of the school district.
“It’s definitely not perfect,” Khaerisman said, “but it’s one of the better ones.”
She likes that classroom sizes are generally small, she said. And her sixth-grader really likes the variety of activities his middle school affords. He stays three days a week after school for various extracurriculars, Khaerisman said.
Plus, he is still generally thrilled to be back learning in-person after months of online schooling, she said.
“He is starting to get a little tired of the masks and his school always eating outside. I mean, he’s kind of over it,” Khaerisman said. “But he also did get his first Pfizer shot today, so hopefully these things will be a thing of the past in his life soon.”
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