Jan. 20—ROCHESTER — As a concerned parent, Eric Snyder hasn’t pulled his children out of the city’s public school system, but it’s crossed his mind a time or two. A father of four, he has two children who attend Lincoln K-8 and two others who will do so if the family decides to stay with its current situation.

Like many families, though, Snyder has been closely following the progression of Rochester Public Schools’ budget cuts, its failed referendum, its announcement that it would have to make sweeping changes including the closure of schools and then later the large donation from Mayo Clinic that allowed the district to re-evaluate those changes.

It’s been a lot. So much so, that the family has started to wonder whether it would be more advantageous to look for another option altogether than to try to ride out the wave RPS is currently taking families on.

“We’re still looking at the private school options, as well as surrounding districts,” he said. “That’s what our family is saying: We’d rather either pay for stability with a private option or go to a district where there’s likely to be less changes in the next few years.”

His situation highlights a worry that has been on the minds of people across Rochester recently: the stability of the district.

However, a related concern is that the school district’s challenges aren’t just a bad situation in and of itself — but that it could turn into a self-perpetuating cycle. After all, enrollment factors into the district’s budget. As students leave, the district receives less funding with which to operate.

The fear is that the changes could dissuade families from wanting to attend RPS in the first place, thereby worsening the original problem, stagnating student enrollment.

There’s a moment in time the district’s leadership can look to as the tipping point for the situation. Five years ago before the COVID-19 pandemic, there were more than 18,000 students in Rochester Public Schools. In fact, the year of 2019-20 — with enrollment at 18,296 — was the peak of a steady climb as the district grew in tandem with the broader community.

However, between the spring and fall of 2020, the district’s enrollment dropped by more than 600 students.

“Prior to the pandemic, we were on this trend: 100, 200 kids — up, up, up every year. There wasn’t any end in sight,” RPS Chief Administrative Officer John Carlson said.

Although the turbulence from the days of distance learning are gone, the student enrollment still has not returned to its pre-pandemic level. In 2023-24, the district’s enrollment registered at 17,581, or 715 below its 2019 peak.

According to RPS, there are more than 21,000 youth in the school district between the ages of 5 and 17. That means there are thousands of students who could enroll in Rochester’s Public Schools, but don’t.

They don’t have to — there are plenty of options.

For starters, there’s a large Catholic school system that, unlike the public schools, has reported promising signs of growth. In December 2023, Rochester Catholic Schools announced that its applications for the coming year had grown by more than 130%.

There are also smaller religious educational schools, including Schaeffer Academy and Rochester Central Lutheran.

Other families choose homeschooling.

Allison Matthews originally thought she would send her son to public school. But in 2019, she realized it might not be the best fit for her family.

The class sizes within the public school system were a little too large for what they were hoping for. So, they switched to Rochester Arts and Sciences Academy (RASA), a private school that provides education from a global perspective.

There, they not only were able to find the lower student-to-teacher ratio they wanted, but the private school also provided a number of other things that matched the family’s values. Their children were able to take language classes from a young age. They also had a wealth of extracurricular activities after school to keep them engaged.

Even though RASA recently expanded with the addition of a middle school program, Matthews knows her children will eventually age out of the school. The family hasn’t decided yet what they will do at that point. Matthews said they may pursue another private school option, but she would be open to sending her children to RPS for high school since they’ll be at a different stage in life.

“I support them 100% with the way that I vote,” Matthews said about Rochester Public Schools. “It’s just that it’s hard to put your kid into a situation where you don’t think they have all the advantages you could provide to them.”

According to the Minnesota Department of Education, the number of homeschool students in the Rochester School District increased from 642 during 2019-20 to 841 in 2020-21 — a 31% increase from one year to the next.

That appears to have been a minor blip on the radar, though, as the number of homeschoolers decreased over the next two years. As of 2023-24, there are 614 homeschooled students in the district, fewer than there were the year prior to the pandemic.

Cumulative student enrollment among all the private schools declined by 4% in the first year of the pandemic, going from 2,078 in 2019-20 to 1,994 in 2020-21.

However, the private school enrollment began to increase over the next two years. In 2022-23, the cumulative private school enrollment was 2,218, representing an increase of 6.7% over the pre-pandemic number.

According to a “market share” presentation during the Jan. 9, 2024, school board meeting, Superintendent Kent Pekel said RPS enrolled 78% of the eligible students in the district during the 2016-17 year.

At that time, private schools claimed 11%, homeschoolers and charter schools claimed 3% each, and other public school districts claimed 5% through open enrollment.

Seven years and a global pandemic later, those numbers have barely budged. RPS lost just 1% of the eligible student population, registering 77% of eligible students during 2022-23.

The distribution of students among the other options has also changed little during that time. Homeschoolers and charter school students still account for 3% each of the population. The percentage of students attending private schools fell to 10%. And open enrollment into other districts picked up a couple of points to land at 7%.

“There is not an exodus from Rochester Public Schools in this community. … It’s not happening. Let’s stop saying it,” Pekel said during the Jan. 9 school board meeting. “There is an aggregate declining number of school aged children.”

2016-17

2022-23

Rochester Public Schools

78%

77%

Private schools

11%

10%

Other school districts

5%

7%

Charter schools

3%

3%

Home school

3%

3%

If RPS hasn’t lost many students percentage-wise to other schools, what explains the sharp decline in students from four years ago?

One factor may be that the percentage of the city’s population who are school-age children has not grown in proportion to the overall community.

In 2016-17, the total general population of the school district was 127,008. That has since grown nearly 10% to the 2022-23 population of 139,658.

In comparison to that double-digit growth, the population of school-age children in the district has increased just 1.6%, to 21,915.

Enrollment data shows a decreasing number of kindergartners coming into the district, and a growing number of seniors exiting. Although students come and go at all stages of their schooling, that relationship between the earliest and final grades is an indication that there are more students aging out of the district than there are coming in.

In 2017, the number of kindergartners was equal to the number of seniors. Over the following six years, those numbers began to diverge. By 2023, there were 356 more seniors leaving the district than there were kindergartners coming in.

“It did top out in that pandemic year,” Carlson said about the enrollment. “It’s just stayed the same even though the total population within our boundary has gone up.”

So is it just coincidence that a changing demographic happened to occur at the same time of the global pandemic?

Pekel said it’s hard to know how things would have been different without the pandemic.

Regardless of the cause, it’s a trend that extends beyond Rochester. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, public school enrollment in 2021 was “11% lower in prekindergarten, 4% lower in kindergarten to grade 8, and 1% higher in grades 9 to 12” when compared to 2019.

An October 2023 report from the Brookings Institution noted the same thing.

“We find that there were substantial declines in public school enrollment during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020 — 21 and 2021 — 22 school years),” the report said. “In particular, the median elementary and middle schools lost more than 6 (percent) and 5 percent of their students during the pandemic, respectively.”

Regardless of the reason for lower enrollment, it comes with serious implications for the school district since it’s a driving force behind the amount of state funding RPS receives.

According to Carlson, the current per-pupil funding that’s applied to the district’s average daily membership is $11,241. When applied to 700 students, that equates to more than $7.8 million the district could have had, if not for the enrollment drop.

RPS has spent the last two years cutting $21 million from its budget. With the failure of the school district’s referendum in November, the district was getting ready to have to cut an additional $10 million in planned spending.

Mayo Clinic ultimately donated $10 million, allowing the district to have to avoid those extra cuts. However, Pekel has emphasized that the donation is essentially a bandage until RPS can find a more permanent solution. The district intends to pursue another referendum in 2024.

During a discussion about the financial forecast on Tuesday, Jan. 17, Pekel contextualized enrollment as just one of a myriad of factors affecting the district’s financing.

He explained that state funding has not kept up with inflation and that special education has become underfunded, leaving the district to have to subsidize that program from its general fund that’s supposed to support all students.

“Greatly increasing enrollment would help lessen, but not completely solve those problems,” Pekel said. “Stagnant enrollment somewhat worsens but doesn’t entirely cause those problems. … After it dropped during the pandemic, it’s less clear exactly right now how much of a driver enrollment is of our deficit.”

Even if the district hasn’t lost a meaningful market share of students yet, there is concern that it could happen with the instability that has reverberated throughout the district recently.

When the district’s proposed levy failed during the referendum in November, the district announced a handful of changes that were expected to follow. Pinewood Elementary would close, as would Riverside Central Elementary. Longfellow Elementary would lose its unique 45-15 calendar. Lincoln K-8 would move into the old Riverside building. And on and on it went.

Then in mid-December, Mayo Clinic announced a $10 million donation to the district — the same amount of additional budget cuts the RPS leadership said were forthcoming.

The donation has allowed RPS to rethink a lot of the decisions it had proposed for now. The district no longer plans to close any schools — although it will still shuffle some of them around, such as having Pinewood Elementary move in with Longfellow Elementary, creating “two schools in one building.” The school board is scheduled to officially vote on the redesign proposal on Tuesday, Jan. 23.

All the commotion surrounding the announcements has caused unease throughout the district.

In the wake of RPS announcing its changes, multiple families stepped forward during a recent school board meeting to voice their support for the district. But they also expressed concern about whether all the chaos would have a negative impact on the district’s ability to draw students in.

“Consider engaging with families who have left or who are contemplating leaving and listen to their concerns,” Alexandra Brosky-Beyder told the school board on Jan. 9. “What will happen if we leave?”

Another parent in the district spoke up during the same meeting, saying although the proposed changes had united families in a way not seen before, the situation could become a red flag to incoming families.

“Maybe more than anything, there’s an insatiable desire for stability in their child’s education,” Nick Mueller said. “Today, families considering moving to Rochester have nothing to be inspired by after what they’ve seen in the last two months.”

Like Snyder, Scott and Jen Elder have been very attentive to the proposed changes unfolding within Rochester Public Schools.

They’ve been invested in the district for a long time. Jen attended Pinewood Elementary as a child. The family purchased their previous home in order to have their own children attend the school. They now have one child each at Pinewood Elementary, Willow Creek Middle School and Mayo High School.

Jen Elder said as a Christian family, it’s important to them to fight for the district rather than look for other options. For them, staying where they are is something they value.

“We are very much about being a light to others … and not just taking our kids out and putting them in private schools,” Jen Elder said. “We want to make a difference and make our community stronger as well.”

They’ve weathered some difficult times with the district before. The Elders withdrew their daughter from Willow Creek when the school was going through a period of unrest. Their daughter told them she didn’t want to use the bathrooms at the school because she didn’t feel safe.

During the 2021-22 school year, a Willow Creek representative of the teachers union, the Rochester Education Association, sent a letter to the school board, describing the increase in

disruptive behavior

. The district subsequently

released a response plan

.

But even after their daughter had un-enrolled from Willow Creek and attended a virtual school instead, the Elders were still involved in a parent group that started engaging the school’s and district’s administration to turn the situation around.

And now, the family is throwing themselves deep into another conversation, trying to help steer their community in the right direction as much as they can through engagement with both other parents and the district’s leadership.

“We believe in the idea of public schools,” Scott Elder said. “This is a rough patch for the school district. And we just have to navigate through it.”

What’s to come with the district’s enrollment in the future? It’s something the district has discussed in recent years, too.

In 2022, the school district contracted with an outside firm, Corporate Strategies, to provide enrollment projections. The firm instead came back with four different possible scenarios. Three of those scenarios projected the district would lose enrollment over the next decade.

The lowest of the four projected that enrollment would fall to 13,503 by the year 2031-32. The next three projections in the study were 15,698, 16,177 and 19,433.

Pekel referred back to that enrollment study during a recent information session about the district’s redesign. He told those in attendance that in the aftermath of the pandemic, the firm wasn’t able to get a more accurate projection for the district to rely on.

Even though the district is still trying to see its way forward, Pekel remains hopeful. He’s frequently referenced the growth in Mayo Clinic’s Rochester campuses, and the people that will eventually bring to the community.

“There continues to be every reason to expect Rochester to be a place of growing enrollment,” Pekel said. “It also requires Rochester Public Schools to continue to be the place where people want to send their kids to school. Because we know … people have options.”