The dwindling enrollment in Miami-Dade County Public Schools is not because of competition posed by charter and private schools, the district superintendent said, but a waning of new students coming to the Miami area — including from fewer immigrants coming to the U.S.
The district, the third largest in the country, has 13,000 less students this school year compared to last. Last year's student body of more than 326,000 thinned to 313,000 going into the new year.
" The greatest impact of our enrollment issue is not students leaving us," Superintendent Jose Dotres said during a presentation to media on Wednesday, it's " students that are not coming to us."
This year's opening week of school saw only 379 more students in charter schools than last year's first week. The uptick in private school students pulled from the district is a 647.
The bulk of the enrollment drop — the other nearly 12,000 — is due to a plunge in incoming students.
Dotres cited a few reasons for this. Most notably, the decrease in immigration to the U.S. The country’s foreign-born population shrunk by more than a million people from January to June, marking its first decline since the 1960s, according to the Pew Research Center.
" They're not coming into the country and they're not coming into our schools," Dotres said.
After the Department of Homeland Security Secretary made it possible for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, to conduct raids in schools, anxiety grew around the possibility of undocumented parents keeping their kids home from school to protect them. No ICE raids on schools have been reported since the directive went into effect.
Dotres said the district conducted a survey asking parents if they were scared to send their kids to school and it didn't " find a pattern of fear."
The shrinking newcomer population can also be attributed to the high cost of living in the greater Miami area and the country's declining birth rate.
Competing for students
The expansion of school choice options in Florida has worried public school educators and advocates, fearing the implications to state funding school districts receive. The more students opt for charters and privates, the less is allocated for the district based on head count.
While the movement of students across school types does have budgetary impacts for Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Dotres hit hard at the perception that the overall loss of students is because parents overwhelmingly prefer privates or charters. Not only does district data not support that, he said, but the perception implies Miami-Dade schools are weaker than their competitors.
He emphasized the need to retain and recruit students. But as the recruiting pool shrinks due to the plunge of newcomers, it raises the stakes of the competition.
" Miami-Dade County Public Schools will continue to make our brand a stronger brand," Dotres said. The district is "prepared to compete and be innovative and keep our students... because the reality is we're not losing a lot to our competitors."
Dotres highlighted the district's focus on "excellence, choice, innovation and safety" as some of the premier attractions for families.
Will schools close as a result?
As the financial challenges of empty seats gain public attention, so does the worry of some potential solutions: closing, consolidating and repurposing schools.
In Broward, the school district is entering Phase 2 of the 'Redefining Our Schools' initiative intended to mitigate its chronic under-enrollment problem. At a workshop this week, Broward school board members discussed the plan, which now eyes 34 schools to potentially combine, close, repurpose or adjust boundaries for. The first phase of the initiative closed one elementary school and expanded the grades offered by five others.
READ MORE: Broward considers 34 schools for closure, repurposing or consolidation as low enrollment continues
Superintendent Dotres said Miami-Dade is looking at potentially repurposing and consolidating schools that may be under-resourced. However, he denied the district is looking at closing under-enrolled schools at this point.
"If we feel that we're doing what's right for kids there, then we support it and we sustain it," Dotres said.
The district consolidated about six schools in the last two years. Dotres did not specify which areas or schools are currently being considered for adjustments.
Dotres added that educational programs and teacher employment will not be affected in this process. " This is our new reality," Dotres said. "We have to adjust to that [enrollment] number and see what the future brings."
