Maine public school enrollment falls by 2,300 students

PORTLAND – Enrollment in Maine’s public schools took a downward turn this year, and experts say the count could fall as much as 10 percent in the next eight years.

Enrollment this year fell 1.1 percent, or 2,300 students. That is nearly double the rate of last year’s decline.

The shrinking enrollment carries implications for taxpayers, students and communities. Fewer students and bigger school budgets result in higher taxes, higher per-pupil costs and fewer school programs for students. The situation has fueled a political drive to consolidate the state’s small school districts and schools.

The declining enrollment is blamed on Maine’s plummeting birth rate and aging population, and so far has affected only elementary grades. There are nearly 17,000 fewer students today in grades K-8 than there were in 1995, an 8 percent decrease, according to the state Department of Education.

Enrollments in Maine’s high schools had been increasing, but are flat this year and are expected to start dropping next year.

“It’s like a wave passing through the schools,” said Richard Sherwood, a demographer who develops enrollment projections for the state. “It hits the elementary grades first, and then it hits the middle grade and then the high schools.”

Elementary-school enrollments are falling in every county, but the declines are steepest in the north and east, where low birth rates are coupled with the continued departure of the region’s young adults.

In Washington County, elementary-school enrollment dropped 20 percent between 1995 and 2002.

The four-town, SAD 30 in Penobscot County now has only 240 pupils in kindergarten through eighth grade and is losing seven to 10 pupils a year. At one school, there is one teacher for every 10 pupils.

At the Blue Hill Consolidated School in School Union 93, there are 36 pupils in eighth grade, but officials have identified only seven pupils who will attend kindergarten next year. The district’s enrollment next year is expected to be 177, a nearly 40 percent drop since the mid-1990s.

Superintendent Mark Hurvitt said the state’s learning standards would require middle school grades to offer a foreign language, a difficult task with only seven eighth-graders and teachers who already are teaching three or four subjects.

“It’s a struggle to add programs in a declining enrollment environment,” he said.

Some experts say the enrollment decline will drive Maine’s already high per-pupil costs even higher. Maine now spends $8,315 per student annually, nearly $800 more than the national average.

At the same time, schools with fewer students will find it difficult to expand or sustain special programs, such as language instruction or science labs.

A task force appointed by Gov. John Baldacci has examined the demographic trends and concluded that small school districts must consolidate if they want to meet higher state and federal standards without burdening taxpayers.

The idea is not to consolidate schools but to consolidate the government structure, said David Silvernail, a member of the task force and director of the Maine Education Policy Research Institute at the University of Southern Maine. He said Maine has 286 school governing units, one for every 720 students, and a school board member for every 115 students. That, he said, is more government than Maine can afford.

“The trick is that school districts have to find ways to be more efficient on the business side so they can free up more money on the instructional side,” he said.

Baldacci said Aroostook County has 19 full-time and part-time superintendents. The area has the same number of students as Portland, which has one superintendent.

Baldacci says money now being spent on administrative salaries should be put into the classroom. He adds that larger schools offer more programs and can better prepare students for the modern economy than small, isolated schools.

“We need to be smarter about our resources and get a better bang for our buck,” he said.

But it’s not so easy to consolidate when communities relish their small schools and local school governments.

“When push comes to shove, each town will want to keep its town school,” Hurvitt said. “Each town has its own school board, each protective of its own little school in its own little town. Changing is not as easy as waving a magic wand.”