“When you leave, you’re gonna get two new documents…”
That statement came near the end of Thursday’s work session at the Alabama Department of Education… a meeting scheduled to be streamed on YouTube that seemed routine.
And it was until state school superintendent Dr. Eric Mackey handed out yellow envelopes containing some preliminary numbers for school enrollment across the state.
And what he said then was anything but routine.
“But here’s the long and short of it. Our reduction in the number of public-school students will be the largest reduction we’ve had in the last four decades. About five thousand students lost when it’s all said and done.”
5000 students not enrolled this year compared to last.
Mackey was quick to note that these are preliminary numbers, that there are about 800 of those missing students that are being flagged as possible clerical errors.
Still others may have taken advantage of the state’s new “Choose Act” and transferred to private school or home schooling.
But even taking that into account, Mackey says that still leave more than two thousand students lost this year with no record of where they went.
And, says Mackey, superintendents are telling him that most of those missing students are Hispanic.
“So, we don’t know if they’re still living in the state and just not going to school or have moved to another state but did not enroll in school in another state or left the country,” said Mackey. “We don’t know if they are documented students or undocumented. That is something we are not allowed to ask, and we don’t ask under federal law. But we know we have about 21 hundred kids that were enrolled last year that have just disappeared. They are not on the radar anywhere. They did not show up for school public or private, and they did not transfer to a school in another state. They are just gone.”
The reduction of Hispanic students in Alabama Schools comes at a time when numbers have been increasing
During the 2019-2020 school year, Hispanic students made up a little more than 9% of enrollment in the state.
For 2024-2025, that jumped up to more than 12%.
But the recent superintendents’ reports of falling Hispanic enrollment in Alabama schools comes at a time when the federal government has been increasing its emigration immigration enforcement efforts across the state.
Mackey doesn’t draw any connection nor conclusions about whether those efforts may be affecting enrollment.
But he says if these numbers hold true when official reports are due from school systems next Friday, it could mean some school could lose teaching positions… totaling hundreds across the state.
“Teacher jobs are tied to total enrollments.,” he told the group. “This is between five and seven hundred teacher jobs that will disappear as we work on the next budget cycle. So, it’s a big impact.”
Mackey says it’s important to get these missing students enrolled, because each day they miss is another day they’ve fallen behind in learning.
The school systems miss out on federal reimbursement dollars as well.
Mackey’s office tells NBC 15 News he doesn’t plan to comment until he gets the officials numbers from each school district, and those are due next Friday.
That’s also when we might learn if and how each of our own local school districts have been affected.