Worcester Public Schools' enrollment changes: it's complicated

Today's Telegram and Gazette front page headline: "Worcester school enrollment sees biggest decline in 12 years"

...sigh...

Let's first acknowledge that the main reason this matters in Worcester is that Worcester is a foundation funded district: the district is funded at just above foundation (if that; I expect we fell below it this year), so enrollment changes and inflation = budget changes. Period. Scott O'Connell knows this from covering Worcester, thus the article.
And it will matter that, as Mr. Allen notes:

Specifically, Allen said, the district would be starting off with a net decline of $3.7 million because of the drop in enrollment.

But the headline, and even the article, miss the story of the Worcester Public Schools and enrollment.
Yes, a difference of 371 students to this year from last year is the biggest single year drop since 2008.
It is not, however, the biggest single year change--the district gained 432 students from 2015-16 to 2016-17, for example--nor is the enrollment in the school district dropping year over year over time.

Here's the previous ten years of district enrollment:

FY20 WPS budget, p. 410. Yes, there is a typo in the year.

To give a little more perspective on this, here's a chart that goes farther back from the FY15 budget:

Yes, I am being lazy and taking a picture of the page; it's p. 334 in the budget book.

As Jack Foley noted Thursday night when we were discussing the air quality report on Columbus Park, Worcester closed eight schools in the early 2000's. As you can see in the above chart, the district hit the lowest point in 2007-08, but has climbed back up above the levels at which the schools were closed.
So now we have over 25,000 students in eight fewer buildings.
Nelson Place was built for larger enrollment (in part due to special education), but that only takes on so much.
We were told Thursday night that about half of our schools have classrooms that are in basement spaces.
Also, there are eight classrooms of Chandler Elementary that have classes at the Main Street Y; they aren't even in the building.

And we haven't been talking about this.

On Thursday, the School Committee recommitted the Facilities Master Plan to the Finance and Operations subcommittee and asked that updating it--it only includes schools build prior to 1990, as those would be possible for MSBA renovation and rebuild--be considered as part of the upcoming budget.

We really have to talk about the lack of space, the lack of updates, the lack of funding for regular work on buildings, for our schools. New high schools are great and are needed, but a new South and a new Doherty takes care of 11% of our students.

It is also crucial that we put district enrollment changes in context. This isn't some huge drop of students; this isn't large numbers of students moving out; this is how it nets out over a large number of schools.

I will add, though, that there is one thing that raises a question in my mind, having now run the school by school changes: what happened in Head Start? Why the drop from 551 to 393?
School by school changes (from the 2019-20 and 2018-29 district profile pages) after the jump:



Belmont: up 12
Burncoat Middle: up 35
Burncoat High: up 30
Burncoat Prep: down 27
Canterbury: down 6
Chandler Elementary: down 14
Chandler Magnet: up 42
City View: up 4
Claremont: up 35
Columbus Park: down 9
Doherty: down 30
Elm Park: down 30
Flagg: down 3
Forest Grove Middle: down 38
McGrath: down 8
Gates Lane: down 8
Goddard: down 33
Grafton Street: down 33
Head Start: down 158
Heard Street: down 22
Jacob Hiatt: up 2
Lake View: down 3
Lincoln: down 26
May Street: down 20
Midland Street: down 8
Nelson Place: up 22
Norrback: down 16
North High: down 26
Quinsig: down 1
Rice Square: down 1
Roosevelt: up 9
South High: up 2
Sullivan Middle: up 10
Tatnuck: up 15
Thorndyke: down 20
Union Hill: up 30
UPCS: up 5
Vernon Hill: up 15
Wawecus: up 10
West Tatnuck: down 19
Woodland: up 1
WAMS: up 4
Worcester East Middle: down 38
Worcester Tech: up 40