Davidson Elementary enrollment falls

While private and charter schools proliferate in the Lake Norman area, Davidson Elementary School’s enrollment has decreased by more than 20 percent over the last seven years.

Since the 2006-07 school year, Davidson Elementary has seen its enrollment drop by more than 200 students, from 947 at its peak to 746 this school year. At roughly the same time, the town was growing dramatically, from 7,139 in 2000 to 10,944 in 2010, according to the U.S. Census.

So is the school district and some neighboring schools: Between last school year and the current school year, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools added 3,159 students to its enrollment in kindergarten through 12th grade – an increase of 2.3 percent.

Locally, Bailey Middle School’s enrollment between the 2006-07 and 2012-13 school year grew from 1,114 to 1,503 students.

Although North Mecklenburg High School’s population decreased from 3,140 to 1,688 in recent years, that was largely due to the opening of Hough High School in 2010.

Meanwhile, the charter school Community School of Davidson saw its waiting list grow from 1,213 to 3,400 since 2008 – although executive director Joy Warner said those numbers partly reflect a growth in the number of grades at the school.

Part of Davidson Elementary’s declining enrollment resulted from the opening of J.V. Washam Elementary, which pulled students from Davidson Elementary in the 2006-07 school year.

But Rick Gay, a Davidson College professor of education, said that much of the decline can be attributed to the proliferation of charter and private schools in the area.

“There’s more choices than there used to be,” he said. “If you have more numbers, the numbers are going to thin out.”

Private school leaders in the area said that some families are opting to move to charter and private schools because they’re fed up with the Charlotte Mecklenburg School District – and particularly a rigid focus on test scores in recent years.

“We have a lot more freedom and opportunity to deliver the kind of education that we feel is the right thing developmentally for our children,” said Cannon school Director of Admission Bill Diskin. We don’t have to worry about end-of-the-year testing. We’re not beholden to an outside agency telling us what to do.”

Other families worry about where their children will go for middle and high school and decide to enter their children in a charter or private school during elementary school, officials said.

“Once you get to our school, you’re done. You know exactly what school you’re going to be at, K through 12,” Warner said. “Some parents are frustrated when their school district lines are redrawn and they have to change schools.”

That concern was aggravated last year with the closing of Davidson IB Middle School, where most Davidson Elementary students went for middle school.

Now, most Davidson Elementary school students attend Bailey Middle School and Hough High School.

Davidson Elementary School principal Dana Jarrett said that he has talked with parents who are concerned about going to a large district school for middle and high school.

Tracy Chartier, an education professor at Davidson College, said she decided to send her children to Community School of Davidson because she thought the small classroom settings would work best for her son and daughter.

“They’ve created an outstanding environment, and it matched my children’s needs,” Chartier said, adding that she also taught briefly at Community School of Davidson. “It’s a smaller community there that has an appeal to me.”

But Chartier said she is a big proponent of public schools.

“There’s this idea that if you’re doing one, it means you’re against the other, and I don’t think that’s true,” she said. “It comes down to what’s best for the individual child.”

To alleviate concerns among parents about the size of public middle and high schools, Jarrett said, he has scheduled more visits between Bailey Middle School’s leadership and the students at the elementary school.

For instance, recently, Bailey Middle School administrators visited the school and helped with Davidson Elementary’s morning announcements.

“We want to make them feel comfortable and help them with the transition from elementary to middle school,” Jarrett said. “I think anticipating middle schools as a bad thing has really diminished.”

Still, over the last couple of years, the incoming kindergarten population has failed to replace the outgoing fifth grade population.

For instance, during this school year, 160 fifth-graders left the school and 110 kindergarteners entered. It’s been a similar story for the previous couple of years, he said.

To counteract that trend, Jarrett said, school leaders have sought to enroll kindergarteners earlier.

“Kindergarten is the year of the unknown,” he said. “But once they get here, it does look to me that families are happy with what we can offer their children.”

Warner said she doesn’t think charter, private and public schools need to be competitors.

“All of those children we’re serving are children in our community,” she said. “It’s not our goal in any way to be pitted against public schools.”

Ideally, she said, charter schools would be a small control environment where innovative educational practices could be tested and then replicated in public schools.

Gay, who serves on the Community School of Davidson’s board of directors, said the decreased enrollment at Davidson Elementary shouldn’t be interpreted as subpar education.

In fact, if he had children, Gay said, he would be happy to send them to the public school.

“I don’t want to come across that Davidson Elementary is necessarily superior to the local charters and privates – just that I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to look for alternatives because Davidson Elementary is a fine school,” he said.