District Experiences Split in Enrollment Trends

Planners already knew housing in Hopkins was different from other communities in the school district. Those differences may now be having an effect on enrollment.

Districtwide, enrollment has dropped so steep that officials , including one agreed upon just Thursday night. Yet ,  and  elementary schools are all growing. Alice Smith and Eisenhower expects to exceed student capacity as early as the 2012-13 school year.

The exact reason for the difference won’t be known until the district has finished analyzing the trends, but Nik Lightfoot, the district’s director of administrative services, is pointing to housing trends.

Many parts of the west metro are experiencing a phenomenon called “aging in place.” Low home prices have persuaded people to stay in homes after their children have left the district, reversing a tradition of older couples moving out to make room for younger families with children. That means more young families with children are moving into rental properties. These trends concentrate student growth in areas with large numbers of rental properties.

Rentals account for more than half of Hopkins housing units—far more so than in the half-dozen other communities that feed into the Hopkins school district. It’s likely not a coincidence that both schools in Hopkins city limits expect growth, but housing doesn’t explain the entire picture.

Eisenhower is one building, but it’s made up of two schools: Eisenhower Elementary and XinXing Academy, the district’s Chinese immersion program. Numbers in the traditional elementary program are expected to drop in 2012-13, even as the immersion program’s growing numbers push the building over capacity.

This may be because the two programs attract students in very different ways. While home address largely determines attendance at Eisenhower, students must apply to attend XinXing, and those applications come from across the Twin Cities.

Whatever is driving the differences, the changes are happening faster than expected. The district originally planned to wait until next year to review enrollment trends. It has now embarked on a study that aims to pin down all these nuances, with details available by August or September.

What will the study do? to read the related story.

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SOURCE: 2005-2009 American Community Survey