In growing cities, a loss of students
Schools aren't sure why enrollment is down. Some experts cite rising fears among illegal immigrants.
from the September 24, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
Declines in Texas and California, too
Some school districts in California and Texas that serve large, mobile Hispanic communities have reported declines in enrollment, too.
In southern California, the Anaheim City School District, the largest of six districts serving the city, saw its enrollment drop 4 percent this year over last, the second consecutive annual decline. The district had seen such a rapid rise in enrollment through the 1990s that its 24 schools had to shift to a year-round program to educate its mostly Latino student body. The enrollment drop allowed the district this year to take 17 schools off the year-round track.
"We've worked with a demographer," says Suzi Brown, director of communications for the Anaheim City School District. "Our birth rates have declined a bit, but it's also people who can't afford to live in southern California. We're transferring a lot [of former students] to Riverside [County and] San Bernardino County, which has less costly housing ... and a lot to Arizona."
In Texas, Harlandale Independent School District in San Antonio has lost nearly 200 students – or 1.3 percent of the total – this year, according to spokesman Pete Barcenez.
"I don't think this is a coincidence," says Joe Vail, director of the Immigration Law Clinic at the University of Houston, of the many reports of lower enrollment. "I think people are fleeing the state and local ordinances that have been putting pressure on local immigrant communities."
The anecdotal evidence is that immigrant families are feeling that pressure. Last week, sheriff's deputies in New Mexico's Otero County nabbed several illegal immigrants and then accompanied them to local schools to pick up their children, says Art Ruiloba, communications coordinator for the Gadsden Independent School District in Sunland, N.M.
"Otero County sheriff's deputies ... picked up a handful of parents, brought them to our schools, and the parents asked to remove the kids from school because the parents or legal guardians were being deported," Mr. Ruiloba says. Six children were removed from the schools to go with their parents. Several other parents have phoned in since then, expressing concern that law-enforcement officials will show up the school to remove undocumented children. Some said they weren't bringing their kids to school for the time being, he says.
It's too soon to have numbers indicating what impact this latest removal of children from the schools has had, Ruiloba says, but "there's an impact of some sort."
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