Roughly 90% of K-12 students are enrolled in public schools. Public school funding, typically provided by state and local governments, is generally allocated on a per-pupil basis.
The demographic trends, starting with the Great Recession of 2008, are now clear: The United States is in the midst of a steep and persistent demographic decline. This decline is not equally distributed: Some red states like Florida, Idaho, Montana, etc., are seeing gains while others, notably Texas and some other southern states are seeing comparatively minor declines.
Blue states like California (-15.7%) and New York (-13.7%) are generally though not exclusively hardest hit. In Oregon, we are almost half way through what is projected to be an almost 11% decline from 2022 to 2031. (See https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d23/tables/dt23_203.20.asp) In real numbers, this is a loss of 62,335 students during that timeframe. The Oregon decline is about double the national average.
Nationwide, these demographic trends are somewhat exacerbated by moves to private and home-school environments which account for 6% of K-12 enrollment. There are wide differences among states here, with some states adding considerable private school enrollment while others like Oregon saw declines from 2012 through 2022. (I don’t have more recent numbers.)
Notably, while national total enrollment is declining, ESL and students with disabilities has increased. In 2022, special education was 13% of K-12 students and ESL was 7%. Both these populations carry outsized challenges, financial and otherwise, compared to traditional K-12 students.
Across 2013 to 2022, student enrollment declined 1%. School administrative and instructional staff was up 8%. Support staff increased 12%. School District Administrative staff increased 36%. Make of that what you will in terms of educational resource allocation.
States and school districts have papered over funding challenges with federal COVID dollars in the last few years. Those monies have run out. In addition to staff cuts (some of which are underway in Salem-Keizer), it is perfectly reasonable to expect a trend of school closures (and layoffs) across the district, the state, and the nation. The students simply are not there, and they will not be there.
This is starting to be felt at the collegiate level as well. This year’s freshman class was the largest there is likely to be in the foreseeable future. Subsequent classes will be smaller, and coupled with the declining value proposition, perceived if not real, of a college education, many smaller college institutions will close or merge. (We are already seeing this.)
All of this comes at a difficult time for Oregon, whose abysmal educational governance has given us worst-in-the-nation or close to it test scores. Locally, we’ve seen some positive movement in Salem-Keizer (which averages about 10 points worse than Oregon), so one can only hope that things are turning around educationally. They will not be turning around demographically or fiscally.