Michigan school enrollment fell by 53,000 students during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Of those students, 13,000 were in kindergarten.
According to Chalkbeat Detroit, Detroit Public Schools lost 2,719 or 5% of students, Lansing Public Schools lost 927 or 9% of students, Kalamazoo Public Schools lost 690 or 5% of students, and Traverse City has lost 552 or 6% of students.
The decline in kindergarten enrollment is concerning to teachers, principals, administrators, and parents across four districts in Michigan.
Principals say the slide is continuing
Gier Park Elementary in Lansing has grades Pre-K-3 and Principal Christopher Cadogan has seen decreases in enrollment.
“If we just look at last year, the 2019 to 2020 school year, we ended that year with 84 kindergarteners,” Cadogan said. “This year we’re at 75 and it’s not the end of the school year.”
Comparing this to the 2018-2019 school year, Cadogan said the school had even more students at 97 and you can really see the contrast between then and now.
Cadogan said kindergarten teaches developmental lessons and tries to provide students with the basic and foundational principles of reading and numeracy. There is a big focus on sight words and letter naming fluency.
“It’s really tough to do kindergarten virtually,” Cadogan said. “I’m a working parent and one of my girls is Pre-K, but it’s really hard to have her sit down in front of a screen while at the same time trying to work.”
Reo Elementary School in Lansing has grades Pre-K through three and, according to Principal Jekeia Murphy, it also has seen a drop in kindergarten enrollment.
Murphy said the school had five children enrolled before the school year started and this year it has only two.
Murphy said they start the year with those five but of course, as the year starts the kids trickle in pretty quickly.
“I feel like the enrollment has gone down and I think it’s because of the way enrollment happens,” Murphy said. “With it being mostly virtual now there’s no paper application and then there’s also the language barrier.”
At the beginning of the school year, she had plenty of parents calling the school saying ‘my child is enrolled here, when does school start’ and she had to tell them they weren’t enrolled, school started already, they needed to fill out this online application and create an account to do that.
“It’s just a lot of barriers,” Murphy said.
Day-care centers see increases
Kristin Salem is the regional director at Adventures Learning Center in Portage, Michigan.
“Our enrollment is down this year. We actually stayed open the entire time last year, we kind have been up and down with our enrollment,” Salem said. “We do have a lot of families that chose to leave their children home due to the fact they were working at home.”
Salem said that a lot of parents decided to keep their kindergarten student at the learning center due to COVID.
“They weren’t sure how the year was going to go. They didn’t want them going back and forth, so they would stay here and then they would homeschool either in the morning or evenings while they were not working.”
Five-year-old children who are attending Adventures Learning Center are enrolled in the 4s and young 5s classroom. The curriculum is play-based and child directed. Adventure Learning Center has contacted kindergarten teachers along the years to see what types of skills they are looking for when kids enter kindergarten.
Salem said “We found that a lot of them were not meeting the social/emotional portion.”
Angel Care Preschool and Child Care in Traverse City has saw a decline and then an increase in enrollment throughout the pandemic. After shutting down in March, Angel Care noticed a decline in families returning due to the uncertainty of the pandemic.
Karin Cooney, executive director of the preschool, said that when it reopened in May of 2020 only 10% of her families returned but then slowly increased as the year went on.
“I think there were some families who chose to keep their children home and wait it out, and there were other families who were remote and had older kids at home to watch the younger ones,” Cooney said. “There were also families whose parents had medical problems and didn’t want to be compromised with contracting COVID, so they kept their children home.”
Cooney said a major issue the preschool is facing right now is finding staff. As a result, the preschool can not open back up to full capacity, although there are enough students on the waitlist to fill it.
“We are completely in-person right now and we have seen an increase in families enrolling with us, but I just don’t have enough staff,” Cooney said. “We only have about 14 kids when we would normally have about 22.”
Emily Spica, executive director of Teddy Bear Daycare and Preschool in Traverse City, has dealt with enrollment differently during the pandemic.
“Our enrollment of children actually attending has declined, but we have not disenrolled those children,” Spica said. “Due to the pandemic we are holding those spots for those families until they feel comfortable coming back.”
Spica said that the school has had five families disenroll completely since the pandemic started, but the waiting list is so long that they have been able to fill those spots right away.
After shutting down completely in March, Spica said there were noticeable behavioral changes in the children when they returned to daycare later that year.
“The changes were mostly due to getting used to being with mom and dad all day and then coming to daycare and forgetting a little bit about our daily routines,” Spica said. “We definitely saw more negative behaviors after children returned.”
Parents worry about social growth
Ashley Klaasen is the mother of kindergarten student Annie Klaasen. Annie is attending virtual kindergarten at Indian Prairie Elementary School in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Ashley Klaasen said, “My biggest concern was more the social aspects and that she wouldn’t be learning the proper social aspects of school from home.
“I was worried that with her not being in school she would regress and not have or be as interested in school, or the desire to learn without physically being in the classroom hands on with other students.”
Klaasen said holding Annie back was never an option but, as virtual school continued at Kalamazoo Public Schools, she said virtual school was not the best option for her daughter.
“Annie has a lot of energy and she’s very hands-on and she is such a people person that’s where our concerns were,” said Klaasen.
For the 2021-2022 school year, Kalamazoo Public Schools has two options. Parents can choose to continue virtual school or have their child attend in-person classes.
Klaasen said she has decided to put Annie back to in-person classes for first grade.
What the numbers say about different districts
While many schools transitioned to virtual learning during the pandemic, some kindergarten parents decided not to send their children to school at all. Chalkbeat reported that Kindergarten enrollment in Detroit Public Schools Community District declined by over 20%.
At Brewer Academy, a K-8 school on Detroit’s east side, kindergarten enrollment fell from 59 kindergarteners during the 2019-2020 school year to 36 kindergarteners during the 2020-2021 school year.
“I don’t believe our enrollment has dwindled because of the pandemic per say. I do believe the enrollment has dwindled because … this flip-flop nature is frustrating to so many parents,” said Sierra Phelps, kindergarten teacher at Brewer Academy.
Phelps teaches in-person classes, and the other kindergarten teacher teaches virtually. During November and December, Phelps transitioned to hybrid learning as a result of rising COVID-19 cases during the holidays.
Students who were going to in-person classes returned to school in March but were sent back to virtual learning after spring break for the remainder of the year.
“Lots of my students don’t have their books,” Phelps said. During the transition to virtual learning over spring break, students left their materials at school and they don’t have a way to get them.
Parents have told Phelps about their struggles with job loss, loss of family members and lack of transportation and resources for their children, which makes it harder for them to assist them with virtual learning.
“Honestly, some of my parents that I communicate with say, ‘I’m just going to wait until this blows over’ and we don’t know when that is going to happen,” said Phelps. “I’ve had to be really innovative and creative with finding ways that students can show their learning online without those materials,” she said.
Some of the fundamental things children learn in kindergarten are phonics, letter recognition and reading comprehension. The combined struggles with virtual learning and lack of resources has caused kindergarten students in Phelp’s class to fall behind.
“Students who have had a very flip-flop year like mine, I have been advocating very strongly to my parents about retention,”said Phelps. “The K-2 space in general … is a safe, remedial space,” she said.
Phelps also recommends summer school for students who may need more help before advancing.
Other schools in the Detroit Public Schools Community District that had declining kindergarten enrollment rates include: Barton Elementary School declined by 16 kind kindergarteners, Edison Elementary School declined from 61 kindergarteners to 48 kindergarteners.
Kindergarten enrollment also decreased in the Lansing public school district by nearly 20%. Of the 10 PreK-3 schools in the district, Kendon Elementary School, REO School and Lyons School had the most drastic decline in kindergarten enrollment.
Kindergarten enrollment in Traverse City Area Public Schools declined by 15%. Blair Elementary school went from 58 to 32 kindergartners. Traverse Heights Elementary School declined from 57 kindergartners to 34 kindergarteners. Central Grade School declined from 84 kindergarteners to 61 kindergarteners.
Kindergarten enrollment in Kalamazoo Public Schools decreased 13%. Enrollment at Arcadia Elementary School declined from 70 kindergarten students during the 2019-2020 school year to 44 kindergarten students during the 2020-2021 school year. Edison Environmental Science Academy declined from 56 kindergarteners to 36. Lincoln International Studies School declined from 36 kindergarteners to 20.
Because of its overall size, Detroit Public Schools Community District lost the most kindergarten students. The district lost 1,039 kindergarten students from the 2019-2020 school year to the 2020-2021 school year. Lansing Public School District lost 189 kindergarten students, Kalamazoo Public Schools lost 133 kindergarten students, and Traverse City Area Public Schools lost 113 kindergarten students.