Nationally and across Missouri, schools saw a significant drop in enrollment during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But in Mid-Missouri, the changes are not quite as stark.
Jefferson City area schools experienced an average drop in enrollment during the pandemic of about 0.76 percent from 2019-20 until the current school year. The schools also dropped 1.94 percent from the 2019-20 to the 2020-21 school year, compared to a 3 percent drop nationally during that same period.
According to preliminary data from the National Center for Education Statistics, the 2020-21 school year brought a 3 percent drop in national public school attendance compared to the previous year. The sharpest declines last year were in preschool (22 percent) and kindergarten (9 percent). The data includes all states with the exception of Illinois, which did not meet the deadline for submitting its data.
In a June news release, Ross Santy, NCES associate commissioner for administrative data, said: “K-12 enrollment in our nation’s public schools has been slowly increasing almost every year since the start of this century. Before this year, in the few recent years where we have seen enrollment decreases, they have been small changes representing less than 1 percent of total enrollment.”
According to preliminary findings from the Common Core of Data, preschool through 12th-grade enrollment increased by 3 percent from 2009-18, indicating if the preliminary findings are confirmed, that growth was undone in just one year. The final results of the NCES analysis will be released in spring 2022.
According to the same dataset, Missouri’s preschool through 12th-grade enrollment dropped 3.08 percent over the same time period.
In Jefferson City, the changes are much more minimal.
On average, public and private schools experienced a drop from the 2019-20 school year to present. Public schools dropped by 0.61 percent and private schools by about 1.06 percent. However, schools this year have shown recovery from the previous year, with an average percent change increase of 1.31 percent between 2020-21 and the current school year.
The private school number includes a 7 percent increase at Immaculate Conception, which is approximate because the 2019-20 number could not be confirmed. The number also does not include enrollment numbers for St. Peter Interparish School, St. Joseph Cathedral School, Trinity Lutheran School, St. Stanislaus Catholic School, St. Francis Xavier School, St. Martin Catholic School, Our Lady of the Snows Catholic School, Immanuel Lutheran School, St. George Catholic School and Immaculate Conception School in Loose Creek.
Data was collected for the following public schools: Jefferson City School District, Blair Oaks School District, Cole County R-1 (Russellville), Cole County R-5 (Eugene), Eldon R-1, Osage County R-3 (Fatima), Osage County R-1 (Chamois), St. Elizabeth R-4, Miller County R-3 (Tuscumbia) and Osage County R-2 (Linn).
Alternative education models have been growing.
Kim Quon, regional director for region 5 of Families for Home Education, a group that supports and educates people on how to homeschool in Missouri, said it’s not possible to count the number of homeschoolers in the state since Missouri does not require registration, but homeschooling has “exploded since the pandemic.”
The organization offers free in-person seminars on how to homeschool that moved to Zoom in April 2020.
“As can be expected, July, August, January and May were historically the most common months for families to think about homeschooling so those months had the higher attendance. However, now, it does not seem to matter which month it is,” she said.
Normally, the organization sees 30-40 people a month for those sessions, she said, but it is now meeting with an average of 123 people per month and 375 per month last year.
Quon also said FHE has seen more interest in homeschooling on social media groups — FHE’s statewide Facebook groups have more than doubled their membership from 5,500 to more than 13,000.
Certainly, the pandemic may be responsible for some of these changes, as more families may be keeping students home or moving to other schools for smaller class sizes. However, Jefferson City area principals cited a number of other factors that affected enrollment changes.
At Immaculate Conception School in Jefferson City, Principal Heather Schrimpf said enrollment floated around 300 prior to the pandemic. The school experienced an influx of students leaving virtual learning programs in the middle of last year because students did not get enough socialization or didn’t feel virtual learning was a good fit, she said.
She’s also seen families move to the area for the lower cost of living in Missouri and the economic opportunities that are available. She said some of the growth is due to parents that feel drawn to Catholic education because of feelings of “lost” faith and a need for God in their lives.
Another private school, Calvary Lutheran, experienced a decline in enrollment, but Executive Director John Christman said the changes were not related to the pandemic and that he’s also seen a decline at the grade school level.
Several public schools said attendance has been relatively constant.
Though Eldon R-1 is at its highest enrollment in the last five years, Superintendent Matt Davis called its enrollment “steady.”
Superintendent Chuck Woody of Osage County R-3 said there have been fluctuations with smaller class sizes, but the enrollment changes haven’t been pandemic-related and the numbers didn’t change much with COVID-19.