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Enrollment drop a threat to educational diversity

FUSD lost students but no the charters, a sign that Flagstaff is heading down separate tracks — both academically and demographically.


Sunday, September 21, 2008

The news that 274 fewer students showed up for classes this fall in the Flagstaff Unified School District raises several questions.

Where did they go? And why?

District officials say they tracked down some of the students and found they had moved out of the district for financial reasons.

Given the high cost of living in Flagstaff, combined with the economic slowdown, that's one plausible reason why the dropoff in fall enrollment was three times greater than in recent years.

But it's not the only one.

Some say the crackdown on employers who are hiring people who are in this country illegally has affected school enrollment.

But if that were the case in Flagstaff, why is the head count at Killip Elementary School, located in a neighborhood with deep roots in Mexico, down just 24? Surely families with small children would have been the first to leave if the breadwinner can't work.

The biggest drop -- 197 students, or more than 5 percent -- came in the high schools. Students in Arizona can drop out of school when they turn 16, so more teens from poor families in Flagstaff might be taking full-time jobs this fall to help support their families during tough economic times.

Others might be taking high school courses online as homeschoolers, but records at the county schools office are incomplete.

What is certain is that there is no equivalent falloff in enrollment at the two charter high schools in Flagstaff. Each is full and has a long waiting list.

Those schools, Flagstaff Arts and Leadership Academy and Northland Preparatory Academy, by law must admit students by lottery. But once admitted, students must commit to the rigorous academic standards set by the schools along with their rules of conduct.

Judging by the long waiting lists, there is clearly a set of motivated students and parents out there who want that kind of rigor and discipline. The charters don't offer the same range of sports teams, extracurricular activities and facilities like libraries and cafeterias. But they have smaller classes than in the FUSD system and the spirit of an intentional community -- students want to be there.

The FUSD high schools can offer Advanced Placement courses, but students on that track are still in buildings with enrollments of 1,000-plus, many of whom don't want to be there. Students who are promoted from eighth grade without having passed the grade-level AIMS tests -- about 25 percent -- are shunted off to remedial classes, creating social tensions and discipline problems schoolwide.

In a college town like Flagstaff, the rise of separate college prep schools like the two charter high schools can be expected if well-educated, upper-middle-class parents are given the choice. Most of these families are not living paycheck to paycheck, so when the economy stalls, they can ride it out without having to pull up stakes for a lower-cost community elsewhere in Arizona.

The charter schools also apparently give these families a reason to stick it out -- none of the dozen or so charters in Flagstaff had any trouble filling their classrooms this fall, even though it's likely some of those parents are going through tough financial times.

And that is the challenge for FUSD: How to create the same kind of excitement and commitment to learning that will motivate students and their parents to stick it out with mainstream public schools in Flagstaff. We say this not because we think there is any ultimate right size that FUSD should achieve -- 11,000 or 8,000 students is all the same to us. The concern is for the two separate and unequal tracks -- both academically and demographically -- down which this community is heading.

The first step needs to be a recognition of not only the enrollment shift but the threat it poses to what is this country's glue of democracy: its mainstream public education system.

The second would be to focus on how to bridge the obvious divide between motivated students and parents and those who are not. Schools can do only so much. Parents should be providing a stimulating learning environment in the home and enforcing good study habits. If families need counseling and students after-school tutoring to turn themselves around, they should get it. The idea is that students from poor and lower-middle-class families don't start with the same advantages as their middle-class peers, and it will take an array of extra resources -- both school-based and out-of-school -- to close an education gap that threatens to become a cultural divide in Flagstaff.

So it might be that FUSD officials are right when they say their high school students are leaving for financial reasons. But that doesn't let them -- or the rest of us -- off the hook. We need to give low-income families a good reason to keep their children in FUSD schools and in Flagstaff, too. No less than our diversity and vibrancy as a community are at stake.

Serving this week on the Daily Sun's Editorial Advisory Board were Publisher Don Rowley, Editor Randy Wilson and citizen members Heidi Nichols, Shan Dan Horan, Cathy Smith, Mary Natali and Joan Baker.

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