Dec. 23—Chandler Unified School District is still the state’s second largest, but its enrollment is declining fast.
Lana Berry, the district’s chief financial officer, gave a state-mandated update on a budget revision at the Dec. 11 Governing Board meeting.
She told members that the district is down nearly 1,000 students in its Average Daily Membership (ADM) from last year. That number is important because it is what the state uses to calculate how much money to send to the district.
Berry said they anticipated losing about 400 students this year in their original projections. Instead, the district lost 990. This is the fifth straight year CUSD’s enrollment has declined. According to its demographer, that trend will continue over the next decade.
Similar declines have impacted Tempe Union and Kyrene school districts as well and projections for future pupil populations in both districts are equally grim.
CUSD said its ADM was 41,102 last school year. In the revised budget for this school year, that number has dropped to 40,112.
Actual enrollment is higher than the ADM because the state only allows districts to count some students (for example, in kindergarten) as a half since they don’t need as many resources.
It also gives more weight to special needs students since they require more resources.
CUSD’s actual enrollment is 42,219. That puts it behind Mesa Public Schools (64,000) and ahead of Tucson Unified (41,000) as the state’s second largest district. Tucson Unified reported an ADM of 37,005 this month.
Chandler Unified was a fast-growing district as it grew with the Chandler-Gilbert area over the past few decades. It reached its peak in the 2019-2020 school year with an ADM of 44,808.
It has declined every year since. The district’s demographer said the reasons are many, starting with a low birth rate and the high cost of buying a home in this market.
Younger families who have school age children are less likely to be able to afford a home in the area and are moving to communities with lower home prices.
There is also increased competition from charter and private schools, as well as a number of families opting for home schooling with Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts.
Rick Brammer, CUSD’s demographer who is with Applied Economics, said that the district is actually doing very well competing for students, pointing to 6,000 students who attend CUSD schools but live outside the district boundary.
However, math is not on the district’s side.
Each May a senior class of about 4,300 students graduates and moves on to the next phase of their lives. They are replaced by a class of about 2,800 kindergarten students.
At its current pace, CUSD will drop below 40,000 students in ADM next year. The last time it was below 40,000 was in the 2013-2014 school year.
This year’s sophomore class is the last of the large class sizes from its growth phase. Brammer said once those students graduate in two years, the decline won’t be as severe. Still, he projected that CUSD’s enrollment will drop to about 35,000 by 2035.
Losing 990 students from a year ago cost the district $3,795,800 in state funding. Overall, Berry said the district’s revised budget is up about $6.3 million from the one it adopted in the summer.
While it lost money because of the ADM decline and in its classroom site fund, it saw increases in unrestricted capital, federal and state grants and other funds.
Chandler Unified School District now has a maintenance and operations budget of $355.6 million and an overall budget of $636.3 million.