Merced County sees schools enrollment rise, defying statewide trends. What’s behind it?

Most of the 20 school districts in Merced County saw enrollment increases between the 2020-21 school year and the current school year , according to new data released by the California Department of Education.

According to the data, 11 of Merced County’s school districts have seen their number of K-12 students go up.

School districts in Merced County saw 401 more students enroll than last school year for a total of 59,066, roughly 0.68% above last year’s 58,665 students. That’s slightly better than the statewide decrease of 1.84%, or 110,238 students.

That could be for a variety of reasons, county education officials said, including how local school districts responded to the needs of local families during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The uniqueness of Merced County is that during the pandemic, we were one of the first counties to re-open,” said Steve Tietjen, Merced County superintendent of schools. “School boards, along with public health, created safe environments for kids so they could come back and not worry about infections.”

Another reason could be the rapidly-expanding housing market in Merced County, Tietjen said. New home construction is going up, and home prices in Merced County are still more affordable compared to prices in Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay Area.

UC Merced, the University of California’s newest campus — which is inching closer to 10,000 students, compared to 875 when the school opened in 2005, is bringing in more families with children. Plus, immigrant families with school-aged kids are also moving here to work in the agriculture industry, Tietjen said.

“The communities across Merced County are great places to raise kids, and that’s why we have so many younger families that come in,” Tietjen said. “Homes are relatively affordable and schools are high-quality. They perform well against other schools in the San Joaquin Valley.”

Merced County enrollment by the numbers

In Merced County, the schools to see the biggest numbers increase in enrollment between the 2020-21 school year and now include those in the Merced Union High School District, with 200 more students, or an increase of 1.79%.

The Merced City School District saw a rise of 122 more students, or 1.12% and while the Los Banos Unified School District, saw 70 more students — an increase of 0.65%.

The districts that saw the biggest upticks in terms of percentage rise in enrollment included the Merced River Elementary School District, at 8.02%, or 34 students, the Le Grand Union High School District, with a 6.21% increase, or 34 students, the Ballico-Cressey Elementary School District, which saw a 3.87% upswing, or 39 students.

The school districts to see the biggest losses in enrollment this year include the Winton Elementary School District, losing 70 students, or 3.61%, the Delhi Unified School District, with 64 students, or a decline of 2.56%, and the Hilmar Unified School District, losing 24 students, a loss of 1.03%.

Perhaps the biggest jump by far happened in the Snelling-Merced Falls Elementary School District, which saw a 26.6% decline in enrollment from 75 students during the 2020-21 school year to 55 this year.

“We’re so small that in a rural, ranching district, families move in that work for ranchers,” said Alison Kahl, the superintendent of the Snelling-Merced Falls Elementary School District. “Then they move, and it shows a big drop.”

Local researchers who study the state of education in the San Joaquin Valley also credit the upswing in enrollment numbers to economic factors, again pointing to the comparatively low cost of living, housing affordability and dynamics that make Merced County a family-friendly place.

“Some reasons are that people are either coming to the Central Valley, or they’re not leaving,” said Nancy Akhavan, an associate professor of education at Fresno State University. “That is a big part of it and one of the reasons that we’re not seeing the declining enrollment they’re seeing across the state.”

California’s education woes

The statewide decline mirrors national public school enrollment trends, according to the California Department of Education. The National Center for Education Statistics said last June that public school enrollment dropped 3% between the 2019-20 school year and the 2020-21 school year, the last two years that national school enrollment data was available.

San Joaquin Valley educators are seeing similar upticks in enrollment in neighboring counties, particularly in Fresno County, which saw a 0.26% rise in K-12 enrollment in the county’s public school districts, showing that 206,018 students enrolled in Fresno County schools this year, up from 205,480 students during the 2020-21 school year.

The statewide drop brings the number of students enrolled in K-12 public schools in California to its lowest level in 20 years and makes this school year the fifth straight year of declines.

“These declines began prior to the pandemic and are projected to continue into the future in California,” wrote Tony Thurmond, the state superintendent of public instruction. “With this data release, we see that the COVID-19 disruptions are playing a large part in negating the steady enrollment gains over the last decade.”

Notably, the biggest enrollment losses statewide came from grades one, four, seven and nine, while the biggest enrollment increases were in kindergarten and twelfth grade.

This story was originally published May 3, 2022 at 11:12 AM.