While most North Carolina students still attend theirdistrict school, more familiesare embracing non-traditional schooling options: charters, private, and, especially of late, homeschools and unschooling.
Enrollment in North Carolina district schools peaked in 2014-15 at just shy of 1.5 million students. That year, 85% of the state’s K-12 students attended schools managed by their local school boards, a share of total enrollment that's since dropped to 77%.
“Parents are getting very upset with being told that just because they live in a certain neighborhood, they must go to that assign school,” said Mike Long, president of the advocacy group Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina. “I'm seeing a complete shift in the mentality and thinking from parents since a generation ago.”
It remains to be seen when the district drain will level off.
Some, like Long, see the trendas progress, a sign parents are finding educational solutions elsewhere in settings that “best fitthe needs of their child," especially since the pandemic.
But others lament what the deemphasis on districts means to a local community while pushing for state leaders to better fund public school systems instead of increasingly backing the alternatives.
Kindergarten enrollments rebound
Kindergarten has made a comeback in North Carolina.
Last fall, many parentsopted to “redshirt" their children duringthe pandemic,delaying kindergarten an extra 12 months instead of starting with virtual lessons. But public school enrollment has rallied this year according to attendance data released late last month by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. Compared to the first month of 2020-21, this year's kindergarten population is up 10%.
“The first few days were emotionally challenging for him as he adjusted to being back in a classroom setting,” said Michele Morris, whose 6-year-old son Gavin started kindergarten in Alamance County schools after redshirting last year. “But after a few days, he settled right in and loves it.”
Yet district kindergarten enrollments haven'tfully recovered. The state's 115 districts still teach fewer kindergarteners — and fewer students overall — than they did before COVID-19.
Cumberland County Schools is teaching 12% fewer kindergarteners than prior tothe pandemic whileAlamance-Burlington School System's kindergarten enrollmentis still down 10% over the past two years.
Alamance-Burlington spokesperson Jenny Faulkner anticipates enrollments will tick higher next fall as familiescurrently redshirting due to the pandemicenter the district.
Homeschoolinggets popular — and political
The biggest beneficiary of the pandemic, in terms of student enrollment, has been homeschooling. Last year, North Carolina's homeschool populationjumped 20% to an all-time high of 179,900 students.
The reasons for this rise vary,but when the pandemicfirst closed schools in March 2020, a lack of childcare and an aversion to virtual lessonsprompted many families to consider at-home options.
Some dubbed these students"COVID schoolers,"butashas often been thecase, COVID-19 simply accelerated an ongoing trend.
In the past decade, the number of students homeschooling in North Carolina has more than doubled, as more parents administer their own curriculums or have their children unschool — a bold educational path that doesn’t involve classrooms, assignments, or lessons.
When homeschooling first gained traction in North Carolina in the 1980s, it primarily served to teach Christian curriculum. Most homeschools are still registered as religious, but a rising percentage, 45%, are secular.
“Homeschooling allows (my children) to learn at their own pace, in a way that feels natural rather than forced,” said Chelsea Mayer, an Asheville mother who says she mostly unschools her two children, ages 7 and 5. Mayer acknowledged not all families have the time and resources to unschool.
This year, as fears of critical race theory mounted,conservativeleaders have also grown more vocal in their support for homeschooling.
In October, North Carolina Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn posted a simple message on this Facebook page: "Homeschool your children."
In aninterview posted to Twitter on Nov. 4 by the group Right Wing Watch, Cawthorn said he believed homeschooled students, like himself, are better prepared to ward off "public school indoctrination" later in life.
Unschooled Asheville: A day in the life of homeschooling's boldest movement
Charters and private schools climb
Even compared to homeschooling, no school alternativehas grown at a faster rate over the past decade in North Carolina than charter schools.
Charters are publicly-funded but run by independent boards. They comply with state standards for public schools and are available to any student in the state, though North Carolina charters disproportionately serve white and wealthier students.
In 2011, the North Carolina legislature lifted the state’s 100-school charter cap. Since then, the number of charters operating statewide has more than doubled and the number of students attending charters has nearly tripled.
“The charter school system afforded both my children smaller class sizes and more individualized attention,” said Michael Lepage of Asheville. Lepage is the father of two adopted children who had experienced the foster care system.
Thisbackground, he said, left some of their emotional and educational needs unnurtured, adding“(the charters) allowed my children that had “catching up” to do so in an environment where they could grow."
More North Carolinians are also picking private schools, which have experienced an 11% uptick in enrollment over the past decade.
Since 2014, a growing number of parents have used vouchers called Opportunity Scholarships to send their children to private schools. The vouchers give qualifying families up to $4,200-a-student in public dollars to cover tuition. Since the program’s inception, most families have used the money to send their children to Christian schools that teach through a “Biblical worldview” lens.
Overall, more than 68% of North Carolina private school students attend religious institutions.
Education in North Carolina:NC charter schools remain wealthier, whiter than local districts. Can they change?
'The public schoolneeds me and my son'
Millicent Rogers’ father attended Durham public schools when the city and county school systems were still segregated. Rogers, who is Black, grew up attending a desegregated and unified Durham Public Schools system. Today, she proudly enrolls her only child, Desmond, in the same district.
A single mother who works at the Duke University bookstore, Rogers has served as the PTApresident and vice president of Desmond’s schools. She believesenrolling Desmond, 10, in a district elementary school to be mutually beneficial.
“One thing I recognize is that not only do I need the public schools as a working-class parent, but the public school needs me and my son,” she said. “The saying "a rising tide lifts all boats" resonates with me, not because my son has the highest test scores, not because I am the most educated, but because together, we have the ability to invest in a system that will serve those who serve it.”
Districts have taken steps toappeal tomore families:virtual curriculums, early college programs, language immersion, and magnet schools that draw students from across a district. In the era of heightened competition, they've also beefed up their advertising budgets.
Education and politics:From Asheville to Fayetteville, school politics heat up during pandemic
Hold harmless: a key funding debate
Districts' funding is tied to the number of students they teach, so lower enrollments can mean hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of dollars out of school budgets.
When enrollment plummeted last year, the North Carolina legislature passed a policy called “hold harmless” which funded districts based on their pre-pandemic enrollments. This year, no such decision has yet been made.
Buncombe County Schools spokesperson Stacia Harris said the district will “make important budget decisions” based on the state’s hold harmless stance.
Some oppose holding enrollments harmless this year, arguing it’s time districts get funded for the students they have, not the students they had.
“I didn't necessarily have a problem with holding budgets harmless (last year) for what everyone agreed was an extraordinary and unpredictable year,” said Terry Stoops, director of education studies at the conservative John Locke Foundation think tank.
“But this year, it's much more predictable. Those in the school districts were able to anticipate what some of their expenses are going to be.”
Stoops added districts have access to more federal funding this year through the American Rescue Plan Act passed last March.
But Mary Ann Wolf, executive director of the Public School Forum of NC, contends enrollments should be held harmless so that “local district budgets do not suffer mitigable harm from this pandemic.”
Looking beyond the hold harmless debate, Wolf said North Carolina doesn’t have “sufficient resources in place to serve the academic, social and emotional needs” of the more than 1.4 million students attending district schools. “We urgently need robust investments in public education that were needed long before the pandemic arrived.”
More:In NC, private schools receiving taxpayer dollars teach U.S. history their own way
Last week's Leandro decision
Last week, abillion-dollar clash over additional school funding came to ahead when North Carolina Superior Court Judge David Lee ordered the state to allocate $1.7 billion to fund public education. The dollarsare intended to remedy the long-running Leandro lawsuit.
In 1997, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled in Leandro v. State that every student in the state must have “the opportunity to receive a sound basic education.” To meet this obligation, courts have determined North Carolinawill have to fund $5.6 billionover the next eight years, with $1.7 billion serving as a start.
But Republican leaders in the state legislature have vowedto resist the order,claiming only General Assembly, not a judge, has the authority to dictateschool funding.
Brian Gordon is a statewide reporter with the USA Today Networkin North Carolina. Reach him at bgordon@gannett.com or on Twitter @skyoutbriout.
