The school must be in the same county as the student's home or in a bordering district in another county. The loss of 19,000 students is based on a district projection that there will be 157,819 students in Detroit next fall, compared to 177,057 in 1997. If you can satisfy the parents and the children here now, you can then attract new ones. If you don't meet the needs of a basic and challenging curriculum, clean and safe buildings, you will not retain the students you have. But it's become increasingly difficult to predict enrollment as charter schools open and students pick other districts, he explained.
Population trends complicate the problem.
Birth rates are down 34 percent since 1990, when 24,000 babies were born in Detroit. What's more, a smaller percentage of those children enroll in Detroit kindergarten classes five years later as more families move away or send their children to other schools. Even if Detroit builds these wonderful schools, it will still have a smaller base to draw from. If they can't capture an increasing share of a decreasing pot, they are really going to be in trouble. Another complication is that while the overall enrollment declines, some neighborhood schools are overcrowded.