AUGUSTA — Enrollment in Maine public schools has only marginally rebounded this year following a 4% decline in 2020, indicating that most students who left during the pandemic have not returned.

The sharp decline in enrollment — the basis for determining state funding to school districts — has pushed the Department of Education to propose modifications to its funding formula for the second year in a row to protect school districts from significant subsidiary losses due to diminished enrollment.

“Even a small change in enrollment of students can throw that very delicate system off balance,” Commissioner of Education Pender Makin said.

Her team created multiple scenarios to evaluate how different adjustments to the formula would affect school funding across the state.

Although there are more students in 2021 than 2020, more adjustments to the formula were necessary this year because it is driven by a two-year average. Funding for the current school year was calculated to include 2019’s higher enrollment numbers, whereas this year’s calculation considers two low-enrollment years.

“This year, you can imagine the perfect storm,” Makin said. “Fewer students being averaged into the formula and the property values having so greatly increased. It could have set up a pretty bleak picture” had the state not proposed adjustments to the funding formula.

Even as enrollments remain low, Makin recognizes that many costs to school districts, especially staffing and operational fees, have remained the same, if not grown, as a result of inflation.

“At the end of the day, schools are not going to be firing teachers,” she said, referring to the preliminary funding amounts which were sent to school administrators in January.

As one example, the Mt. Blue school district experienced a 7 percent decline in enrollment from 2019 to 2021, yet the district expects to receive an estimated $60,000 more in state funds for the upcoming school year, according to Superintendent Christian Elkington.

Still, some school districts are facing difficult decisions as they consider their anticipated state subsidy, with one Franklin County district having already voted to reconfigure its schools this fall.

“It’s different in every district,” Makin said. “There are, sadly, every year winners and losers. We found a solution that had more winners and fewer losers. And where there are losses, they are able to be explained by forces other than COVID impact.”

ENROLLMENT

From the fall of 2019 to 2020, Maine public school enrollment fell by 4.4%, from 180,336 to 172,474 students. There are only 684 more students enrolled in 2021 compared to 2020, a 0.4% increase. Counts remain just under 4% lower than in 2019.

Makin said she was gratified to see that many of those increases were seen in lower grade levels, including kindergarten and prekindergarten, which saw the greatest decreases in 2020.

Enrollment in Maine public schools was declining long before the pandemic, dropping by an average of 0.41% each year between 2012 and 2019. But as schools moved to hybrid and remote learning, many parents turned to alternative methods of education, including home schooling, online charter schools, and private schools.

As public school enrollment fell, home schooling boomed. According to data from the DOE, there were 53% more home-schooled students in 2021 (10,332) than in 2019 (6,763), an increase of 3,569. In 2021, there were 14% fewer home-schooled students than in 2020 (12,085), indicating high retention.

Some parents who reenrolled their children in public school this year did so reluctantly and later expressed regret, pointing to pandemic mitigation policies and disruptions caused by quarantines. Other parents said the pandemic gave them the opportunity to home-school, and they don’t plan on sending their children back.

FUNDING 

Adjustments to the state funding formula won’t take into account every factor that has changed significantly during the pandemic. Property valuation, which rose by 6% statewide last year and 5% the previous year, is a critical part of the formula which will remain unaltered.

Between 2007 and 2020, property values rose, on average, 1.8% each year in comparison.

Makin said changes in property value, which are used to help determine the extent to which each community can pay for the overall cost of local school districts, are considered normal fluctuations. Still, she acknowledged that rises in property values do not necessarily correlate to an increase in available community funds.

On Jan. 21, the Strong-based Maine School Administrative District 58 directors voted to reconfigure their schools, changing one of three elementary schools into a middle school, in anticipation of a second year of reduced state funding.

This was one of five options offered to the board. Another proposal suggested closing Mt. Abram High School and sending students to Mt. Blue High School in Farmington instead.

MSAD 58 received nearly half a million dollars less in state subsidies for 2021-22 than the previous school year, leading the district to draw from federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund to pay 15 of its staff members this year.

Reconfiguring the school will allow the district to cut costs and minimize its losses in the state funding formula, especially as enrollment is expected to continue declining, according to a community letter written by Superintendent Todd Sanders.

“In order to not have schools be funded based on an artificially low scenario, we have adjusted the formula in a way that we think is equitable and does the most good and the least harm,” Makin said, clarifying, “I don’t think it does any harm. It just helps some more and others have those additional factors that we can’t adjust for.”

Declining public school enrollment is not the only funding factor the state adjusted for. After offering free meals for all students beginning in 2020 with the help of federal emergency funds, school districts have collected far fewer free and reduced-price meal forms from parents.

These forms are used to track the number of disadvantaged students in each district. Districts with large numbers of disadvantaged students receive additional funding from the state.

“That’s a measure that’s very important to our state’s educational funding, both from federal government and it’s reflected again, in the state funding formula. There’s an additional … subsidy for every one student who is enumerated within the disadvantaged count,” Makin said.