School enrollment slowdown helps budget writers

Georgia legislators trying to balance the state’s budget have reaped one benefit from the recession: school enrollment is growing slower than it has in many years.

Public school enrollment in Georgia grew by 30,000 students between 2005 and 2006. Last fall, the increase was about 6,000.

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That slowdown is freeing up about $100 million in funding that lawmakers had expected to spend to educate the 20,000 to 30,000 additional students that Georgia schools usually see each fall.

While the slower growth is good news for budget writers, it also brings concern.

“We look at it as fortunate today, but there is some trepidation about what this bring for us down the road,” said House Appropriations Chairman Ben Harbin (R-Evans). “That growth was happening before because we were creating jobs, people were moving in.

State officials have long had to set aside huge chunks of money to educate the extra children that enter Georgia schools each fall. The last few years, the mid-year reserves for education have been in the $150 million to $188 million range.

With Georgia regularly ranking among the top states in the country in population growth, school enrollment ballooned year after year, particularly in suburban areas. The money was needed to hire more teachers.

Gwinnett County’s enrollment, for instance, rose from 110,000 in 2000 to 157,000 last fall. Cherokee County’s school enrollment increased 43 percent during that period. Forsyth County’s enrollment nearly doubled.

But then Georgia’s house-building and jobs boom went bust and people stopped moving to the state. Others left. The state’s population grew 2.5 percent between mid-2005 and mid-2006, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. It grew 1.7 percent between mid-2007 and mid-2008. The difference between those two years: about 70,000 fewer people being added to the state.

As of the latest Census Bureau report on population change, Georgia remained one of the top 10 states in terms of population growth. But that was largely for the period before the recession strangled growth.

School districts like Fulton, Gwinnett, Cherokee, Henry and Forsyth continued to grow last fall, just not as quickly as in the past. Others saw declines.

Overall, the state set aside $187 million in mid-year reserves to pay for schools this fiscal year. It will wind up spending less than $78 million on enrollment growth.

It is unclear whether the growth slowdown is a short-term development or a sign of the future.

Dale Davis, a spokesman for the DeKalb County School System, said his district has been in the 100,000-student range for several years with little change.

Enrollment spiked a little after Hurricane Katrina bashed Louisiana and Mississippi and brought refugees to the area. But Davis said, “As things got back to normal, about 99 percent of them went home.”

He described DeKalb as a “mature community” where not a lot of growth in enrollment is expected.

Kathy Christie of the Denver-based Education Commission of the States, said DeKalb and close-in suburbs in Atlanta are following the same pattern as she’s seen in other states.

“In the Denver metro area, the furthest out suburbs are increasing (enrollment), the next tier in is static, the next tier in is beginning to decrease, and the city has been down for awhile,” she said. “That is fairly typical.”

What it will mean to districts is unclear.

Gwinnett County’s district, the largest in the state, has seen less state money flowing in as enrollment has slowed.

But it’s not been all bad, said Rick Cost, the district’s chief financial officer.

“The rate of increase in expenses for teachers, textbooks, materials, etc., also has slowed over the same period,” he said. “The slower growth situation is much better than no growth or a loss of students.”

Cost said the slower growth has also helped the district catch up on its building program, which has been going gangbusters for more than a decade.

The slower growth has been a blessing for state officials trying to paste together a budget that has a $2.6 billion shortfall. Most state agencies are being cut at least 10 percent. Workers are being laid off, many more are being forced to take furloughs.

Just this week, Gov. Sonny Perdue announced an additional $131 million in spending cuts, on top of more than $2 billion already ordered. He recommended most of the $131 million come out of education.

Harbin said the situation would have been even worse without the money set aside for the enrollment growth that never happened.

“It’s good in this economic climate because we don’t have to put as much in mid-term adjustments and we are able to use a little bit to eliminate some of the cuts,” he said. “But if it’s a trend, it’s not a good trend. There is a bigger issue about how we get Georgia growing at the same pace again.”

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SCHOOL ENROLLMENT

Student enrollment growth has slowed throughout Georgia. Here are the October enrollment figures for some of the big Metro Atlanta systems the past four falls.

Source: Georgia Department of Education