Isle schools get
roomier as nation’s
classrooms bulge

WASHINGTON >> A record 49.6 million students filled U.S. schools in 2003, breaking a mark set by their baby boomer parents and giving educators a new generation of challenges, the Census Bureau said yesterday.

But the growth -- largely due to children who were born in the late 1940s to early 1960s becoming parents themselves -- does not extend to Hawaii, whose public school enrollment peaked in 1997 and has steadily decreased since then.

"It may be due to the fact that younger families, due to the cost of living, have moved to the mainland," said Sandy Goya, state Education Department spokeswoman. "There's been a reduction of families moving to Hawaii."

In the 2003-2004 school year, 217,432 school-age children were enrolled in Hawaii public or private schools, down by about 200 students from the year before.

And according to Census figures released earlier this year, the number of elementary- and middle-school children in the islands dropped from 151,841 in April 2000 to 143,522 by last July -- a 5.5 percent decline.

Also, Hawaii's high-school-age population represented only 5.3 percent of Hawaii's population last year -- the second lowest in the country.

Nationally, though, the 2003 school enrollment total soared past the 1970 record of 48.7 million -- a so-called "echo effect" that "could have predicted ... back in 1970 when we had all those kids," according to Mark Mather, a demographer for the Population Reference Bureau. "We knew they were going to have kids of their own."

Even if it is not surprising, the record tally of students in the first 12 grades poses steep challenges for schools: recruiting teachers, keeping class sizes manageable and coming up with enough financial aid for college students.

In population rings outside urban areas and in Western states such as Nevada and California, the growth has been intense, increasing demands on schools.

"They just really don't have the fiscal capacity to match this," said Scott Young, senior policy specialist in education for the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In districts outside Atlanta, Houston and Las Vegas, enrollment has soared more than 20 percent in last five years, said Bruce Hunter, who directs lobbying for the American Association of School Administrators.

His group has identified more than 400 such districts.

"The pressures are to stay up with it, to hire, to get the classrooms staffed, to find quality principals," Hunter said. "But the joy of it is you have this tremendous opportunity because the communities have a real clear stake, so you have vibrant school systems."

In other parts of the country, such as the upper Midwest, the school population has declined in some counties, Mather said.

"Some of those kids are driving an hour or two on a bus to get to school because there aren't enough kids to keep local schools open," he said.

Immigration helped fuel the boom. A total of 22 percent of students had at least one foreign-born parent, including 91 percent of Asian children and 66 percent of Hispanic youngsters.

Many high-growth states have not prepared well for that racial and ethnic transformation, said Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. With the largest-ever high school graduating class coming soon, colleges are being pressed to provide capacity for everyone while keeping tuition affordable.

"These kids are coming along at a time when, unlike the baby boomers, their chances of a middle-class life without college are almost nil," Callan said. "It's going to drive higher-education policy over the next few years. This is a huge challenge."

During the peak enrollment year during the baby boomers' time in school, almost eight in 10 students were non-Hispanic whites. In 2003, 60 percent of students were white, 18 percent were Hispanic, 16 percent were black and 4 percent were Asian.

Yet the diversity of the teaching corps has not nearly kept pace, said Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, which is working to address that disparity.

"The question is, What's going to be the match?" Weaver said. "It's not that the teachers who are not minorities cannot teach -- they can. But what's going to be done to create an excellent environment for all teachers and students?"