Stephanie Elizalde, the superintendent of Austin ISD, told NPR that the state of Texas has agreed to "hold the district harmless" for enrollment declines for the fall semester only. She is hoping that students start to show up in greater numbers now that the school doors are open a few days a week. Otherwise, she said, "We could have huge cuts."
"I don't think there's ever been a time I can recall where I visited with colleagues and all of us are like, how are we going to manage this? ... Knowing that you have these cuts during the most economically challenged times and a pandemic is — I mean, that's just unheard of," she said.
Baker agrees that a downturn in enrollment this fall does not automatically equal a budget cut next year — states have time to pass measures in the spring to help schools make up the gap in funds.
But in the meantime, budget pressures may push schools to make reopening decisions that they wouldn't otherwise. In Florida, for example, enrollment in Miami-Dade, Broward County and Orange County — all of which are in the top 10 largest districts nationwide — has dropped by several thousand students each.
Back in July, on the same day President Trump implored schools on Twitter to open in the fall, the Florida Department of Education offered school districts the following deal: Reopen and get funded based on the much higher enrollment levels from before the pandemic, or don't, and get funded based on the actual number of students. Plus, districts will get about $2,500 less for every student who remains online-only.
Judith Marte, the chief financial officer of Broward County schools, said at a recent school board meeting that the expected enrollment drops of 8,500 students could lead to a significant reduction in a district budget that is already "disgustingly low." And that shortfall, she added, could lead to potentially cutting thousands of jobs.
On the other hand, echoing the difficult decisions educators around the country have faced, Marte said she worries about the safety of returning students to buildings full time. "This is also incredibly stressful for staff, it's incredibly stressful for this board and the superintendent ... To do what's right for our community, it's a very, very difficult place to sit," she said.
Bay Area Schools Holding Steady, For Now
The Bay Area’s two largest school districts have reported drops in enrollment, but say the decreases are not greater than typical yearly fluctuations.
Four weeks into the school year, San Francisco Unified reported 505 fewer students enrolled compared to the same time a year ago. Similarly, Oakland Unified reported 749 fewer students enrolled. Oakland school districts spokesman John Sasaki said enrollment had been flat for the past few years, and called this drop “a larger change than normal, but not huge.”
While state funding is tied to enrollment levels, California schools are not facing reductions thanks to the state Legislature, which is holding funding levels to the previous years’ enrollment figures.
Some charter schools, however, which are seeing significant increases in enrollment this fall — likely due to the pandemic, have sued the state to try and capture more funding to help them serve these additional students.
Concerns About the Youngest Students
If students are not showing up at their public schools, where are they going? Possibly to private school, though dozens of private schools have shuttered since the start of the pandemic. Child care centers, which may accept pre-K and kindergarten students, are threatened as well. But there are some reports of private schools gaining students even as public schools are losing them, in places where private schools are in person and public schools are virtual or hybrid.
"The inequity of the situation is just really staggering," said Olshavsky, the mother in Austin. "We were basically able to pay to keep our kid in a safe learning environment."
Austin Superintendent Elizalde agrees that her main concern is an "exacerbation ... of opportunity gaps in students from different economic backgrounds."
Not all families have the means to send their children to private school, or devote a parent to home schooling full time. Some families, Elizalde said, will be leaving children home with older siblings or to sit in front of the TV.
Jessica Diaz is a nurse in Tampa, Fla., married to a firefighter, with three daughters. Since she and her husband work in high-risk environments, they don't want to send her children to school in person. But she's struggling with the district's online learning offerings, too. Her children's nanny is Spanish-speaking and has trouble with tasks like navigating Zoom class meetings.
"I don't think [virtual school] is a sustainable option for our family at this point," she told NPR. "For all of the burden of constant emailing, changes in schedules, assignments and submissions, etc., we feel the content of the education that is being delivered is far below our girls' capabilities and not worth the trouble at this point."
She plans to pull them out and home-school after the winter break, when she hopes she'll have time to put together a curriculum; but she'll have to do the actual teaching herself in the evening hours after work.
Experts in early childhood education agree with Elizalde that keeping kids out of kindergarten and pre-K, in particular, is likely to exacerbate existing inequalities. Kindergarten is not compulsory in most states. That means children can sit out the year without necessarily doing formal home schooling or private school.
They may enter next year as first-graders, or simply delay the start of kindergarten — a practice sometimes called redshirting and, in normal times, more popular among affluent families and boys.
Diane Schanzenbach, an economist at Northwestern University who studies redshirting, says starting kindergarten late has no long-lasting educational advantages and may even have some drawbacks, for example in lifetime earnings. And Chloe Gibbs, an economist at the University of Notre Dame, says decades of research have underlined the importance of early childhood enrichment for all children, and especially for children from lower-income and less educated families.
"We have consistent evidence that these kinds of interventions can have big effects on children's both short-term skill development, but really importantly, their long-term life chances," Gibbs said.
In other words, pre-K and kindergarten are the rare educational interventions that both narrow gaps and lift all boats.
When families keep children home, the opposite may be true, said Gibbs.
"Parents may be choosing not to send their kids to pre-K or to hold back their age-eligible kids from kindergarten," she said. "And that could be fine for kids in terms of their skill development, if they are in homes where they're ... reading a lot."
But, she added, what experts really worry about are kids "for whom this early childhood landscape has changed so much. And what are they getting kind of in the absence of having those important early experiences?"