Thousands of students left California schools last year — again — but not in Fresno
Enrollment in California schools dropped again this year by roughly 1.8% — but not in Fresno County, where enrollment marginally increased, according to new data released by the California Department of Education.
The reported loss of about 110,300 students last year brings California’s public school enrollment to its lowest level in more than two decades and marks the fifth straight year of overall declines.
The numbers triggered alarm bells around California, particularly for the state’s largest school districts in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Long Beach, which accounted for nearly a quarter of the loss in student enrollment this year.
But for the 2021-22 academic year, Fresno County schools appear to be bucking those trends with more stable enrollment numbers.
Total K-12 enrollment in Fresno County increased slightly by 0.26%, from 205,480 in the 2020-21 school year to 206,018 in 2021-22.
Three of Fresno County’s largest school districts saw similar trends. K-12 enrollment in Fresno Unified increased from 72,419 in 2020-21 to 72,455 in 2021-22, or by roughly 0.05%. Clovis Unified enrollment dropped by about 0.2% from 42,790 to 42,699. Central Unified also dropped by 0.08%, taking enrollment from 15,742 to 15,729.
Experts attributed the statewide drop in K-12 enrollment to a declining birth rate and overall population of school-aged children in the state, as well as the pandemic steering people toward other options like private school and homeschooling.
What’s happening in Fresno County schools?
Nancy Akhavan, an associate professor at Fresno State’s Kremen School of Education and Human Development, said that Fresno’s steadier enrollment numbers might have something to do with mobility — or, in the Central Valley, a lack thereof.
In more affluent parts of California, especially along the coast, more people can afford to relocate or transition to homeschooling in search of a better education for their children. But in places like Fresno, where the poverty rate tends to be higher, that flexibility isn’t there.
“They have options that people who are in low socioeconomic status jobs don’t have,” Akhavan said.
At the same time that it may be harder for families to leave the central San Joaquin Valley, there appears to be an influx of people leaving expensive coastal cities for inland areas like Fresno, said Edgar Zazueta, the new executive director of the Association of California School Administrators.
District leaders in Fresno Unified also attributed the district’s relatively stable enrollment numbers this past year to migration from Southern California and the Bay Area. In an email to the Education Lab, district spokesperson Nikki Henry noted that immigration from other countries also contributes to the district’s enrollment.
Fresno Unified’s student population stability is more of a recent trend, however.
Since the 2000-2001 school year, enrollment in the district has dropped roughly 8%. Peak enrollment in this period was at 81,408 in the 2003-04 school year.
Meanwhile, Clovis Unified and Central Unified have seen relative growth since the turn of the century, although the pandemic curbed some of that momentum over the past two years.
From 2000-01 to this year, K-12 enrollment in Clovis grew approximately 30% after starting at 32,717 in 2000-01. Central Unified saw roughly a 53% increase in enrollment from 10,290 in 2000-01.
Other variables
Another factor driving some of this year’s K-12 enrollment trends — although more difficult to measure — might be the increasing polarization of education-related issues in some areas.
Across the country, school board meetings have become frequently contentious ideological battlegrounds over the teaching of critical race theory and COVID restrictions at schools, among other subjects.
Fresno County schools were no stranger to this phenomenon, where some parents have protested mask and vaccine mandates.
“It’s important not to overstate that because I think it’s going to depend on the community,” Zazueta said. “But I would say it’s definitely a variable that’s noteworthy here, given what we’ve been dealing with as schools, unfortunately, became the epicenter of some of the bigger cultural wars, especially around COVID.”
The pandemic has also made it more difficult for schools to plan ahead, even in response to data like this. Akhavan, who previously worked in Fresno Unified as an assistant to the superintendent, stressed that the pandemic created issues in education that people “couldn’t have dreamed” would ever happen.
“I never found that one year made a trend — and I can’t even say two years makes a trend with the pandemic because the pandemic is like a joker, right? In your deck of cards,” she said. “You just don’t know what’s going to happen.”
