Salem schools will lose thousands of students over next 5 years – Salem Reporter:
About 4,500 fewer students will attend school in the Salem-Keizer School District by 2030, according to a new district forecast. The new report will inform plans for school renovations and potential closures over the coming years.
The report predicts enrollment will continue to decline at a steady pace, losing the equivalent of a full elementary school worth of students each year.
By 2030, schools in the state’s second-largest district will enroll about 32,000 students — down from a peak of almost 42,000 in 2017.
I have been saying this to anyone who will listen for a couple years now. Last year’s graduating class will be the largest for the foreseeable future. It’s all downhill from here demographically speaking, and the consequences for Public Education and small colleges are likely to be pronounced.
Two factors are driving the drop in Salem and across the state.
Birth rates fell significantly during the Covid pandemic, and the smaller population of children born in 2020 and 2021 are now beginning kindergarten.
“Right now we’re graduating 3,500 kids and we’re bringing in 2,500 kindergarteners,” Odenthal said.
Fewer families are choosing to put their children in public school. Odenthal said more are using homeschool or private options such as micro schools, co-ops and other programs that sprang up during the pandemic.
In 2019, about 90% of kindergarten-age students within the district attended a public school, the report shows. Now, it’s about three in four.
The demographic decline is one thing. That Salem-Keizer Public Schools no longer represent a good value—even at the price of “free”—compared to home schooling is about as damning a piece of evidence as one can find that schools are failing the kids.