Enrollment in Durham Public Schools (DPS) is down by about 1,000 students this year, marking the largest year-to-year drop since the historic COVID-era decline.
The district, as of an unofficial tally at day 20 of the school year, is down to 30,172 students from 31,188 at about the same time last year (there are a handful of ways to measure enrollment throughout the year, and enrollment numbers aren’t final until the spring). Since 2020, enrollment has hovered between about 31,400 and 31,000. In the five years before the COVID drop, the district averaged about 33,000 students.
DPS board of education chair Bettina Umstead called the data “sobering” at Thursday’s school board meeting. But Durham is not unique in its decrease—superintendent Anthony Lewis said that nearly every public school district in North Carolina saw a drop this year. The size of the drop, though, came as a surprise to DPS administration, who had projected enrollment to increase slightly from last year.
A decline in students is not good news for any public school district because state funding is allocated on a per-pupil basis and costs become more onerous as a district loses students. In next door Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools, for instance, administrators have started discussing the possibility of closing down an elementary school to cut costs.
There is an extra burden if those students leave for charter schools, because local districts are required to provide commensurate funding to charter schools in the county.
DPS would not see a resultant drop in funding until next year, Chief Finance Officer Jeremy Teetor tells INDY via email, noting that “We have to evaluate local budgetary implications by evaluating our enrollment trends in tandem with charter school enrollment trends. We just recently received all of our necessary charter school data to conduct this analysis.”
It’s not that easy to track where students are going, but administrators have pointed out four factors that could, together, explain the enrollment drop.
1. Drop in birth rate in 2019-2020.
Durham County saw its lowest resident number of births in 2019-2020 (about 4,000), down from a recent high 2014-2015 (about 4,500) Administrators said that may help account for the roughly 150 decrease in kindergarten enrollment since last year, though it does little to explain significantly larger drops in third and ninth grade enrollment..
2. Increase in opportunity scholarships.
Per DPS, the number of county residents taking advantage of “opportunity scholarships” has increased by about 360 students since last year, reaching a new high of 2,400. Opportunity scholarships are private school vouchers that are paid for by public funds—ie, your tax dollars hard at work. The General Assembly recently removed income limits for families, and, as The Ninth Street Journal previously reported, 44 percent of Durham students who were awarded scholarships last school year would have previously been ineligible because they were in a wealthier “tier” (marked in this case as a family of four with an income higher than $115,440 a year). Still, it’s not clear how many students receiving opportunity scholarships left DPS for private school.
On Thursday, board member Natalie Beyer railed against those vouchers, citing reports that about two-thirds of the 200 private schools that received the most voucher funds in recent years had religious requirements for admissions.
“I also want to call out explicitly to our families that are in private schools and taking public taxpayer money for your child’s private education. Stop. You don’t have to do that. And it’s explicitly—when put to voters, state after state after state, people vote down vouchers, they don’t want taxpayer money going to typically religious schools,” Beyer said.
3. Increase in charter school enrollment.
Enrollment of Durham students in charter schools has increased steadily over the past decade. Last year, the number of Durham residents enrolled in charter schools jumped from 7,641 to 8,288. While the numbers are not yet available for this year, a continued increase seems likely, which would chip away at DPS enrollment.
4. Immigration enforcement, perhaps.
Beyer, on Thursday, also speculated that immigration enforcement may be driving some families to keep their students home. At recent board meetings, parents and community members have asked that the district try to do more to protect students and families who may be at risk.
While DPS has not experienced raids at schools (and the Trump administration swears it’s not interested in carrying those out), the 2016 case of Wildin Acosta, a then-Riverside High School senior who was detained by ICE while getting ready for school, is not far back in the history of DPS.
While it’s not clear exactly where each would-be DPS student has gone, board members agreed perceptions of district services are likely a factor in parents choosing different options.
On the services side, DPS has recovered from a 2023-2024 teacher pay crisis and a 2024-2025 transportation crisis, which left parents on the hook when school days were canceled by teacher sickouts or their student’s bus didn’t arrive. Lewis, now in his second year as superintendent, has managed to at least project some measure of control and consistency across the district, even through oft-turbulent discussions with its largest teacher’s union.
Board member Jessica Carda-Auten asked staff to try to gather more information on why students are leaving so the district can appropriately improve service.
“I want to learn what’s making them leave … so that we can then work to do better to be the school district that serves the needs of all the students,” Carda-Auten said. “Not just because it’s the morally right thing to do, but because it’s what’s best for their children.”
And on the marketing side, Umstead wondered if the district could somehow better communicate its improved capabilities since those crises.
“What do we need to do to make sure families know that we’re the best option?” Umstead asked.
Reach Reporter Chase Pellegrini de Paur at [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].