Enrollment at elementary, middle and high schools in the Palm Beach County School District is down by 649 students since the beginning of this school year, an October count conducted by the district shows.
A preliminary count on the 11th day of school alerted officials to a significant enrollment drop of thousands. The October count, one required by the state for budget purposes, not only reflected that deficit but also indicated more students had left in the time between counts.
The October count showed 158,541 students in district-operated elementary, middle and high schools, which is down by 6,094 from the year before. The big decline will mean less state funding and a budget shortfall of $40 million, district officials have said.
“The state’s core funding model, the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP), is student-based, so funding follows the student,” the district said in a prepared statement explaining the impacts of the enrollment decline.
“When a student enrolls in one of our district-operated schools, the state operational funding generated by that student stays with the district to pay for our teachers, staff, and classroom operations. Conversely, when a student in our county enrolls in a charter school or uses a state scholarship like the Family Empowerment Scholarship to attend a private school, the state funding generated for that student is passed on through our budget.
“The enrollment decline of more than 600 students in our district-operated K-12 schools directly impacts our operational budget.”
A $40 million budget shortfall
The budget shortfall has been a big factor in the district’s negotiations with the Palm Beach County Classroom Teachers Association, the union that has been pushing for a 5% raise. A district spokesperson, citing the loss of an additional 600-plus students and the worsening budget situation, described the CTA’s request as “not fiscally responsible.”
The district has countered with an offer of a 1.5% raise and a one-time bonus of 1.5%, figures union officials have said will not go far enough to help teachers afford to live one of the most expensive counties in Florida.
The union has declared an impasse in its negotiations with the district, which typically triggers a process that takes the dispute to a special magistrate who would make a nonbinding recommendation. But both the union and the district have expressed a desire to bypass the special magistrate and have the salary dispute settled by the Palm Beach County School Board.
The union is holding a rally in support of higher teacher pay outside of the district’s Forest Hill Boulevard headquarters at 4 p.m. on Nov. 19.
Each year, district officials conduct an 11th-day count to get a first look at enrollment. The district then conducts a count in October that is reported to state officials to help determine funding.
Enrollment dropped across grades, schools
This year’s 11th-day count showed an enrollment drop of 6,086 students, including 5,701 at district-operated schools. That drop stunned district officials, who said they were expecting a much smaller enrollment decrease.
The follow-up count in October showed an even bigger enrollment decrease among district-operated elementary, middle and high schools.
Enrollment counts can be affected by a variety of factors, including the time and day it is conducted, district officials said.
The October count did not show any of the schools to have experienced huge enrollment declines. Instead, it showed the declines were spread out among scores of schools.
As they did when discussing the drop shown by the 11th-day count, district officials cited a variety of factors to explain the declining number of students.
“The School District of Palm Beach County believes the decline in enrollment is part of a regional trend affecting all large urban school districts in Florida,” the district said in a prepared statement accompanying the October count. “We attribute this trend to factors such as wider demographic shifts in our region, the expansion of Family Empowerment Scholarships, and the rising cost of living in Palm Beach County.”
Community organization officials said some immigrant families have left the area because of the Trump Administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration. And some students in families that have remained skip school because they are afraid their attendance could trigger either the detention or the deportation of their parents, community officials have said.
The district does not track the immigration status either of students or their parents and has no firm numbers on what impact the administration’s immigration crackdown is having. District officials have said there has been a decrease in English-learning students.
In Tallahassee, state legislators continue to pour money into alternatives to traditional public education, including Family Empowerment Scholarships — taxpayer-funded scholarships that can be used to attend private schools.
Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republicans in the Legislature say the scholarships increase options for parents who may not want their children to attend traditional public school schools. They tout Florida’s high ranking from groups that look at the number of education choices available to parents and students.
Meanwhile, Democrats and other backers of traditional public schools counter that the taxpayer money money used to pay for private school scholarships could, instead, be directed to higher teacher pay and more per-pupil education spending, where Florida ranks among the bottom in the nation.
The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and the support for private school scholarships are policy choices that could be affecting district enrollment. But the third factor cited by the district, the rising cost of living, is beyond the influence of any one policy or practice.
Over the past five years, the median sales price of a house in Palm Beach County has risen by about 20% and is now about $510,000. The average rent of $2,100 for a one-bedroom apartment in West Palm Beach is up by about 22% over that time and, according to national figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the cost of groceries rose by almost 25% from 2020 through 2024.
Salaries in some fields have come close to matching those rising costs. But income in many other households have not kept pace with rising costs, making less-expensive locales outside Palm Beach County an increasingly attractive option.
District officials have worked to expand options for parents and students and continue to describe district schools to them as “your best choice.”
Wayne Washington is a journalist covering education for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at wwashington@pbpost.com. Help support our work; subscribe today.