For the first time in at least 30 years, the Gwinnett County public school system is slated to begin a new school year with fewer than 1,000 new students.
The district that grew by 7,400 students as recently as 2006-2007 is expected to see only 692 new students in the school year that starts in August.
J. Alvin Wilbanks, Gwinnett County’s CEO and superintendent, attributes the enrollment slowdown to the economic downturn.
It’s the same in other districts — just more glaring in Gwinnett, the nation’s 12th-largest school district and a record-setter for years in growth.
Wilbanks and school system planners see a quick, albeit small rebound. In the meantime, said school system spokeswoman Sloan Roach, “it’s nice to take a breath and catch up.”
The district added eight new schools in 2010 and one in 2011, moves that have allowed some students to shift from trailers to more traditional classrooms, Roach said.
In addition, the school system for the first time will be investing nearly half of the proceeds from its next five-year sales tax in technology. In the past, because of enrollment increases, that money has mostly been used to build new schools and expand others, Roach said.
The district still has areas where school overcrowding is an issue. One middle school is over capacity by hundreds of students, but will see some relief when a new school built with sales tax revenue opens in the Peachtree Ridge cluster in 2014. By 2015, a new high school will open, eliminating the need for portable classrooms at Berkmar and Central Gwinnett high schools, district spokesman Jorge Quintana said.
Enrollment in neighboring Fulton County is still going up, though not at the pace it once did, and Cobb County’s enrollment basically has been flat for years.
Between October 2010 and October 2011, all 180 of the state’s public schools collectively added about 8,000 new students. That’s fewer newer students than the Gwinnett school system took in during the 2005-2006 school year after the influx of Hurricane Katrina victims.
Jim Skinner, a planner with the Atlanta Regional Commission, said school districts are seeing a “blow-back effect or residual effect from the economic slowdown.”
Even as the economy is picking back up, the new jobs that are being created are being filled by the existing labor force, Skinner said. As a result, there’s not much state-to-state migration for jobs, the kind that can translate into an influx of students, he said.
“It’s hard to see on an average annual basis that it will be bouncing back in the short term to the levels we were seeing six and seven years ago and certainly that we were seeing in the late 1990s and in the early part of the decade,” Skinner said.
That, he said, could in another couple of years create a “sea change” in how school districts plan for future building.
“A lot of the newer schools that have been built have not been occupied at the projected rate. Enough of that happening is going to lead to a certain amount of circumspection and holding back in terms of building new schools,” Skinner said. “We shouldn’t project as if it is business as usual, and I don’t think we will.”
Several underpopulated schools were ordered closed last year in DeKalb County, where enrollment has declined from a high of 102,310 in 2005-2006 to 98,088 at the student head count last October.
The administration in Atlanta Public Schools is looking now at closing some schools and adjusting attendance zones for some others, despite some parents’ protests. Although the district’s enrollment has largely been flat in recent years, the changes being proposed are more about making better use of resources by eliminating empty seats.
In Gwinnett, parents Jamye Allen and Bonita Collins both say they believe that a slowdown in school enrollment may be a good thing, especially if it means smaller class sizes.
Collins has two children in elementary school and one in middle school in the Norcross area and doesn’t like seeing classes with 25 to 28 students. That’s too tough on the teacher and on the students who are trying to concentrate, she said.
“We could use a little slowing down,” Collins said. “Of course, we’d miss the taxes.”
Allen moved with her two children from Houston in late 2009 and purposely found work and a home in Gwinnett because of the school system’s good reputation.
But lately she’s been concerned as she’s heard her children complaining.
“Certain classrooms are unruly to the point where they say they can’t concentrate,” Allen said. “They come home and ask: “What if I fail?’ ”
She said she believes one reason why enrollment might be dropping is the crackdown on illegal immigrants. Her daughters, who are in sixth and eighth grades, lost classmates and neighbors when their Hispanic parents could not find work and returned to their native country.
Trajectory of public school enrollment*
Source: Georgia Department of Education
*includes enrollment from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade
** Gwinnett County Public Schools provided enrollment figures that vary slightly from state numbers. Gwinnett saw an enrollment increase from 135,392 in 2004-2005 to 144,627 in 2005-2006, which officials attribute to an influx after Hurricane Katrina.
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