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Apr 29, 2023

HISD enrollment dips as Houston follows U.S. metro public school trend

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Doneva Lewis was

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Doneva Lewis was tired of watching her oldest daughter, Morgan, return from school "looking like a walking zombie." The two-hour bus ride to and from Lanier Middle School in Montrose from their home in northwest Houston was taking a toll on the 12-year-old, and so was the bullying.

When a car wreck left the mom unable to drive her three youngest children to McGowen Elementary School in their old neighborhood, Houston Gardens, she made up her mind: She was taking them all out of Houston ISD entirely. After a brief stint in nearby Aldine ISD, Lewis decided to home-school her four children.

"I just decided it was too much, my (oldest) child is being stretched too thin. She went from being an outgoing person to someone who just didn't care," Lewis said. "I said 'OK, let's get you out of here. I can't leave you there.'"

Lewis' children are just a few of the over 26,000 students who have left HISD since the 2016-2017 school year, when the district's enrollment over the last decade peaked at 216,106 students, according to Texas Education Agency data. Since then, HISD enrollment has dropped about 12 percent to 189,934 students in the 2022-2023 school year, and that number is expected to drop more in the coming years, according to district projections.

Among Black students, the enrollment declines are even higher. Over 10,000 students, or about 20 percent of the district's Black student population, have left the district between the 2016-2017 and 2022-2023 school years, TEA data shows. Lewis says her children are thriving in their new learning environment.

"I'm seeing a lot of growth, they're paying attention to detail more. It may be because of the environment, I don't always have school inside," Lewis said. "Giving them that freedom relaxes them more, we're able to work on activities together and they have different assignments based on grade level, and I think they enjoy it."

Declining enrollment is one of the largest problems facing the incoming HISD superintendent and board of managers that will be appointed by the Texas Education Agency, which is expected to announce its selections Thursday. Like many other school systems, Houston faces a looming budget crisis as enrollment continues to fall, as the district's funding is directly tied to its number of students. Other urban districts, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, are also experiencing declining enrollment.

Experts say there's no single reason that enrollment has dropped, but instead point to a confluence of factors, some of which may not directly relate to education. Families may move outside HISD boundaries, for example, in search of a lower cost of living. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows that public school enrollment in most suburban Houston counties has increased since the start of the pandemic, while U.S. Census bureau data shows that population growth in the Houston suburbs dwarfs that of the city.

"Every family wants their kids to be in the best schools they can be, and sometimes these larger external forces put constraints on our ability to match what we want with the other choices we have to make to support our families," said Catherine Horn, executive director of the Institute for Education Policy Research and Evaluation at the University of Houston.

While enrollment has dropped across HISD, the decline has been especially pronounced at the pre-kindergarten level. Total enrollment in the district inched upward over the last decade until 2016, while pre-K enrollment has been falling steadily since at least 2012. Pre-K enrollment dropped by about 4,000 students, or roughly 25 percent, between 2012 and 2023.

That drop is concerning because research shows that a quality preschool education is crucial to preparing children for kindergarten and setting them on the right track for academic success. Children who enter kindergarten with a pre-K background are more likely to read on grade level throughout their time in school, graduate college and even earn more over their lifetime, according to Ellie Johnson, director of early learning at Good Reason Houston, an education non-profit that has partnered with HISD on issues related to preschool enrollment.

Research developed by the Houston Education Research Consortium (HERC) shows that children who attended HISD pre-K were two to three times more likely to be prepared for kindergarten than those who did not attend pre-K, Johnson said. Attracting families earlier could end up paying dividends, experts said.

"Enrolling a child in preschool and beginning to engage that family early is also working to build a relationship with that family and keep them enrolled in HISD programs. It's the first touch point the district may have with a family and help them sustain enrollment over time, and of course in the short-term, a child enrolled in preschool provides the district with average daily attendance dollars," Johnson said.

Though HERC research shows that economically disadvantaged children, who are typically eligible for free pre-K in HISD, are more likely to live near a pre-K program than other children, HISD doesn't have enough seats in those areas to meet demand, Johnson said.

She also said the district may need to boost its marketing efforts to eligible families, though she noted that a declining birth rate, family mobility and the COVID-19 pandemic also contribute to declining enrollment.

Marisol Castruita, early childhood director at HISD, said they are working to address those issues by rolling out a new program next year in which the district will open five additional pre-school classrooms with independent childcare centers in areas of high need. She also said the district's student enrollment team is holding promotional events in communities across the city, and have recorded commercials for parents to air on Univision, Telemundo and ABC 13.

"We want to start early and start capturing those students as early as 3 years old, so they can attend our schools and see a smooth transition into kindergarten... and have that foundation for the following years," Castruita said.

Many parents are sticking it out at HISD, despite seeing their children's classmates leave for other options. Anna Viramontes Chuter's son Edward is finishing third grade at Roosevelt Elementary, a Northside school that has seen its enrollment drop to just over 400 students this year from over 700 in 2016-2017.

Chuter has kept her son at Roosevelt because they offer special education programs for Edward, who has autism, that she says he wouldn't get at nearby charter schools. At Roosevelt, Edward gets one-on-one direction from a teaching assistant and attends "inclusion classes," she said, that offer support for special education students in a general education classroom.

"I stay because there's more of a community feeling, everybody knows each other and the teachers interact with each other, and they strive to have these kids really want to learn. I've been very impressed with Roosevelt," Chuter said.

Chuter, an activist with the advocacy group Community Voices for Public Education, says charter schools — which are free, open-enrollment schools that are publicly funded but independently run — are depleting traditional public schools of students, saying they're "taking away from the kids and taking away the funding from schools."

Data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows enrollment in Harris County charter schools grew by 105 percent between the 2017-2018 and 2021-2022 school years.

Horn, the University of Houston education dean, said that while charter schools are not solely responsible for the drop in enrollment, "we do have evidence that charter schools are receiving increasing numbers of students relative to their public school counterparts."

Proponents of charter schools say they offer parents who are unhappy with their child's educational options another choice, and characterize them as just one part of a broader public school system.

"There's one system of public education and charter schools are a part of that, so we don't see that at all as taking, we see it as giving communities more opportunities to meet the needs of kids," said Brian Whitley, a spokesman for the Texas Public Charter Schools Association.

Annette Toyama, who lives near Hobby Airport, enrolled her son Dominick at YES Prep Hobby because the commute to Baylor College of Medicine Academy at James D. Ryan Middle School, an HISD magnet school that Dominick earned a seat in, was simply too far. She never considered enrolling him at his zoned school, Daniel Ortiz Middle School, saying she was concerned for his safety (Ortiz has not failed a TEA rating since at least 2014).

Toyama said her son, who will begin 10th grade next school year, is flourishing at YES Prep Hobby, having received a personal laptop from the school, joined the volleyball team and completed cooking and driver's education classes.

"He's been doing really well. He was a very quiet, introverted child, and he's really opened up," Toyama said.

HISD, like other major urban school districts across the country, expects enrollment to keep falling in the upcoming school year, projecting a further loss of about 5,000 students. With a new, state-appointed superintendent and board of managers expected to take over the district on June 1, it remains uncertain how the district will square the continued drop in enrollment with the projected $258 million budget deficit facing the district by the 2024-2025 school year.

"We're still operating the district like we have 215,000 students, we still have the same number of buildings open, the same grownups in the buildings, operating like we have the same number of kids, but because of how the funding formula works, we don't have the revenue — we're funded by the state based on average daily attendance but its 187,000 students instead of 215,000," said District V Trustee Sue Deigaard.

Deigaard said Superintendent Millard House's administration has not been transparent with the current board, which will no longer be around to address the issue, around why families are leaving or how they plan to address the budget deficit.

"The lack of transparent info provided to this board has been deeply concerning. I don't have a comprehensive financial picture that leaves me with any sort of comfort as far as knowing what we have or have not done," Deigaard said.

Melanie Gomez, executive director of enrollment and student innovation at HISD, said her team of six people calls every family that does not re-enroll to ask their motivation for leaving, and that most families tell her they moved out of HISD boundaries. The district did not respond to questions from the Houston Chronicle on whether or not that information was shared with the board.

Gomez said her team is continuously taking steps to enroll families in HISD in a number of ways — those include the driving the district's Mobile Enrollment Unit, a van where parents can sign up for schools with the help of HISD staff, to community events across the city, and partnering with refugee resettlement agencies to translate enrollment materials into languages like Dari and Pashto (languages spoken in Afghanistan) and K'iche' (an indigenous Guatemalan language).

She said she's not discouraged by the enrollment trend facing HISD and other major cities.

"If we're able to support even one family and support them throughout the enrollment process and provide them with a much easier process than what they may have been faced with prior, I'm happy," Gomez said.