The New York State Department of Education has finally released all the current ('20-'21) school year enrollment data. These numbers were anticipated (maybe just by me) to examine for evidence of the impact of COVID closures on public school enrollment. I'm starting from the premise (suggested anecdotally) that in the 2020-21 school year some parents, frustrated by COVID-related school closures and unhappy with distance learning, withdrew their children from public schools in favor of non-public schools, as well as home-schooling. For example, news stories suggested that Greenburgh's Rivertowns were ground zero for an emerging national movement of "pod" learning as an alternative to online public schools. Did parental threats of withdrawing kids from COVID-closed public schools actually come to pass? Yes, but to a small measure and only in a some of the "prestige" school districts. On with the data! [as always, Tarrytown, Pocantico Hills and Valhalla school districts include communities outside of Greenburgh]
A. 2020-2021 School year totals
B. Comparing 2020-21 with 2019-20 school year
sources: http://www.p12.nysed.gov/irs/IRSReports.html; https://censusreporter.org
Overall, public school K-12 enrollment townwide dropped by 296 (or -1.8%) while non-public (including home school) numbers increased by 142 (+10%). All districts but Valhalla (can someone explain Valhalla?) saw an increase in nonpublic enrollment. The variations within the districts, however, are striking, and a closer look points to varying causes.
Greenburgh Central (GC) public school K-12 enrollment has been dropping for several years (down 12% since '16-'17), but in past years this drop was not attributable to a shift from public to non-public: district non-public enrollment has similarly decreased (10%) during the same time frame. As I've written before, familes with school age (K-12) kids are disappearing from the GC district at an alarming rate, not seen elsewhere locally. Nevertheless, we did see an uptick in GC non-public enrollment for the first time in a number of years with that number of students increasing from 502 to 520, which suggests that concern about school-related COVID closures motivated the families of at least 18 students to leave GC for alternatives.
It is no suprise that the big shift away from public schools came in several of the more "presitgious" school districts, i.e., Hastings, Ardsley, or Edgemont. Some of these shifts, however, are quite small: only 16 more kids left Edgemont public schools. Pocantico Hills is not really comparable as it is a tiny K-8 school distict only. Bizarrely, Irvington, which is demographically comparable to Edgemont, Hastings and Arsdlsey, defied this trend and saw only tiny non-public growth. Least surprising is that Hastings-on-learningpod saw a signficant non-public increase, with about half of these additional departures going the home school route. Similarly in Ardsley, about half of the leavers went to home school. Presumably, nearly all of the home schooled kids will return to public school next year, if they haven't already.
In percentage terms we saw a big increase in non-public kids in certain school districts which, as evidenced by the home school increase, was certainly COVID-related. The totals overall were unprecedented but not dramatic. The Town of Greenburgh is definitley not seeing the death of public education (although we may be seeing the demise of families with school age kids in GC, but that's a different story). Of the "name brand" school districts, only Hastings saw a public school decrease exceeding 2%, and with most of those going home school/pod route, most of this loss will likely be restored next year.
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