Ever since Evans Elementary closed, I have been providing periodic updates on school enrollment and related metrics. I felt it was important for all residents, especially parents, to know where we stood, whether there was a danger of schools hitting their capacity, whether schools were overcrowded and whether classroom sizes were increasing. Approximate twice a year, I would gather all the data, compile it into charts and give my thoughts.
I had hoped the June 2020 update I wrote might be the last one. Evesham was now 4 years removed from the decision to close Evans, schools had not reached capacity and class sizes had not increased. If you are looking for a full report on where the district was prior to Covid, that post is a good place to start.
With the onset of Covid-19, it doesn't make sense to compare some of this years numbers with previous years. The number of students per classroom by necessity needed to decrease, as only half the children are in a classroom at any one time. So comparing class sizes with previous years is a meaningless statistic.
As such, I will not be doing a full review of enrollment compared with previous years, but here are some things that struck me as unusual or important.
- After holding relatively steady over the past 3 years, enrollment is down significantly, almost 5%. Enrollment went from 4452 in Sept 2019 to 4253 in Sept 2020, a loss of 199 students.
- The single greatest contribution to the drop in enrollment is the decline of Full Day Kindergarten. Full Day Kindergarten is available for some students for free as part of 'Early Intervention', but most full day Kindergarten students are PAID. The Evesham Kindergarten program has been well-regarded in the past, leading to a steady increase in paid students year after year. This is a big revenue driver for the district, but those numbers have dropped precipitously, which is perfectly understandable. Why pay for full day Kindergarten when much of the teaching will be done remote? Additionally, my guess is some children near the cutoff date may have held back a year by their parents and will start Kindergarten next September.
- For the 2020-2021 school year, the cost for full day Kindergarten (according to the application) was $5,500. A reduction from 2019 of 198 Full Day Kindergarten students to 70 this year is a potential decrease in revenue of up to $704,000! Combined with drastic cuts in school aid from the state, this will make future budgets more challenging.
- All schools have slightly lower enrollment, except for Jaggard, which increased slightly, from 354 students to 363.
- Birth rates in Evesham increased in 2019 after a decline last year. An increase in births will affect enrollment 5-6 years in the future, when those newborns enroll in school.
- While I have no documentation to back this up, I believe that also contributing to the decline in enrollment would be increased enrollment in private schools and increased home schooling. There are some private schools that have full-time in-person teaching, which Evesham does not currently have, which might be attractive to some families. It is an open question as to whether those students would return to the Evesham district next year (or whenever things have gone back to normal, with full-time in-person classes). I have not been able to find the number of home schooled students in Evesham or NJ to check trends
- Approximately 30% of ETSD students are full-time remote.