Austin district enrollment to decline 10% next decade, report says

Despite growing by several hundreds of students this school year and breaking its dwindling enrollment trend, the Austin school district‘s student population is expected to resume a downward path and drop by 10% in the next decade, according to a new demographic report.

Administrators had projected a loss of more than 1,600 students in the 2019-20 school year, but the district actually gained 764 students,mostly in middle schools, according to the report by enrollment projection firm Templeton Demographics.

According to the report, the Austin district has 80,890 students. It also shows a slight growth in the kindergarten level, the first increase in several years, demographers said. This could bring a little hope to a district that has been adding students to its middle and high schools but losing them at the elementary level.

The report, however, predicts that the district’s student population will resume its decline in the medium and long terms. It projects that enrollment (excluding out-of-district transfers) will decrease by 4,597 students, or about 6% of the current student population, in the next five years. By the 2029-30 school year, demographers expect Austin schools to have lost 7,796 students.

Even though the Austin area continues to add jobs at a higher rate than the rest of the country and unemployment remains low, property values have kept rising, and administrators believe that is one of the reasons the district is losing students. In addition, the report points out that a significant number of new home sales last year were condominiums and town homes, households that tend to have fewer school-age children.

Charter school openings and expansions also represent increased competition for student enrollment, even more than before. According to a University of Texas Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis brief last month that analyzed enrollment trends of the district and Austin-area charter schools, the number of charter students increased 792% between 2008 and 2018.

District administrators decided to close and consolidate some schools over the next several years partly in response to a decline in enrollment, among other factors.

On Nov. 18, district trustees voted to close four schools: three that are in historically black and Latino neighborhoods in East Austin and an all-transfer downtown school known for being the oldest school in the state.

Dusty Harshman, a chairman of the facilities and bond planning advisory committee, said he thinks the district is not competing enough with charter schools in the area. Harshman saw the demographic report as a missed opportunity to look for solutions to a diminishing district.

“In the era of school choice, parents are making decisions grade by grade on where to send their children to school, and the decision is way more complex than it needs to be,” Harshman said. “AISD should do everything that they can to understand (parents’) decision to opt their children to other schools.”

Trustees will discuss the demographic report at Monday’s school board meeting. District administrators will also give an update on the transition process for the four schools that are closing this school year — Pease, Brooke, Metz and Sims — and plans to provide support to the families affected by the closures.

Correction:This story has been updated to reflect the Austin district‘s current student population, including students who have transferred from other districts. It has 80,890 students enrolled in the 2019-20 school year, according to the Templeton Demographics report.