Cambridge School Enrollment Declines

Though the "baby boom echo" is crowding school systems across the country, Cambridge's public schools aren't feeling the pinch.

In fact, total district enrollments fell a staggering 8 percent from 1995 to 1999, spelling a loss of 653 students.

It's not over yet. The district is expected to lose another 116 students--a full 2 percent--this year.

And these estimates may be conservative. From 1998 to 1999, the elementaries' numbers slipped by 226--more than 4 percent in just one year.

Why the exodus?

Old-time Cantabrigians are leaving the city as rents increase, and in their place are a richer bunch.

The new residents who have children seem to be looking more toward private schools, making public schools compete for their children.

And competing is just what the public schools are doing. From a scrutiny of their programs to a relaxing of school choice restrictions, the schools and the district are trying to retain students.

It's one of the biggest problems facing the district, and as such, will be a chief point of contention in the upcoming School Committee election.

The New Cambridge

So what's behind this downward trend?

"The number one reason is the decline of rent control," says Lois Sullivan, district director of public information.

The gradual elimination of caps on rent prices, phased in over the past four years, has changed Cambridge's demographics.

"A lot of people who lived here and raised their kids here and developed the sense of community that I grew up in have been forced to move from Cambridge," says school committee candidate and lifelong Cambridge resident Michael Harshbarger, a football coach at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS).

And in their place, "a very large majority of empty-nesters are moving in," says School Superintendent Bobbie D'Alessandro.

Even those new families with children may be less likely to send their children to public school.

"I'm not so sure that we have so many fewer children as much as we may have a different group of children," says School Committee incumbent candidate Alice Turkel. "Families [now] have different economic resources and different values."

The public schools are grasping for a solution. In the past two years, D'Alessandro's says she has tried to conduct an exit interview with every family leaving the Cambridge public school system. Of those she interviewed, about half are leaving because they're moving out of Cambridge, and half because the children are entering a different school system--a decision she says she respects.

"I tried to talk to them and we really tried to work with them, but I honor what parents want for their children," says D'Alessandro.

The Private-School Allure

Jacqueline Miller is one Cambridge parent that D'Alessandro might be interviewing soon.

Her two sons, ages 12 and 13, attend the Longfellow School, but she says she is considering sending the older one to a private high school instead of to CRLS.

Cambridge's public elementaries tend to provide the small class sizes, various specialized programs and personal student attention that parents crave.

But Miller says when it comes time to send their children to CRLS, many parents balk.

"A lot of us have concerns about the high school," says Miller, who works as a developer of high school science curriculum for the Education Development Center. "At least for my friends, that's where the transition has been."

The numbers for CRLS, the city's only public high school, are slightly more reassuring than those for the elementary schools. Though the school has lost 7 percent of its population since 1995, enrollments remained steady from 1998 to 1999, stalling at 1,910.

"I think the high school is a very good place for a self-motivated child," she explains.

But for her older son, she says private schools are attractive because "I think he'll get more attention there."

However, Miller says her son would actually rather continue in the public school system than switch to private.

"Whenever my kids go out to the suburbs, they take pride...in being tough city kids," she adds. "They feel like private schools have a snob-ism they don't want any part of."

Since private school reporting is less stringent, no conclusive data is available on the numbers of Cambridge children attending private schools.

However, private schools that report to the Massachusetts Department of Education counted 1,606 students from Cambridge in 1996, according to the district office of public information.

In 1998, that number had risen significantly: The same schools reported 1,704 Cambridge students.

Miller points to the state's new standardized testing system, the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS), as one factor that leads parents to favor private schools.

"There's a lot of creativity in the Cambridge schools that's being squashed because of the focus on testing," says Miller, who was formerly on the Haggerty School's school committee. "For parents who have the ability to move their children to private schools, this may be a factor."

But D'Alessandro responds that the district still encourages teachers to adapt the standardized curriculum into individualized, innovative lessons.

"Parents worry that we're going to teach the test, but we really aren't," she says.

Not Just a Cambridge Concern

Since the Massachusetts Department of Education does not assemble data distinguishing private and parochial enrollments from public enrollments, it's hard to say whether the Cambridge phenomenon of falling public and soaring private enrollments is unique.

School Committee candidate Nancy Walser, who spoke with admissions directors at Cambridge's private schools for her book on Cambridge schools, says private schools' new applicants are not just coming from Cambridge.

Thus, her guess is that it's not necessarily quality concerns causing Cambridge public schools to lose students.

"I think it has more to do with the strong economy," Walser says. "[Private school enrollments] have gone up across the board."

In fact, parents determined to keep their children in public school may actually find Cambridge a better alternative than many nearby districts, Walser says.

"People are moving to Cambridge for our public school system," she says. "We have small schools, and we also have very favorable student-to-teacher ratios."

Choice or Chance?

The system of school choice, a distinguishing feature of Cambridge public schools, both attracts and deters potential students.

Under the current system, parents submit their top three choices of programs--e.g., traditional programs, bilingual programs, arts-focused programs--for their children. Children are given priority in the two schools nearest their home, each of which may house more than one program.

That's complicated by district caps for the percentage of white, black and "other" students in each school. Particularly in racially imbalanced neighborhoods, students may be barred from attending schools of their choosing or even schools near their homes because of these caps.

"In many cases this artificially depresses our enrollment, if a certain race of child wants to get into a school and it's full," Walser says.

Instead of simply sending their children to a different public school, some parents who don't get their first-choice school withdraw their children from the public system altogether and look instead to private schools, according to Walser.

To compound the problem, in years past, parents of children registered for private schools were not allowed to be on the waiting lists for public elementaries.

But the district has begun its struggle to satisfy parents and win back students. This year, that rule has been reversed, and private school parents can enter their children on public school waiting lists.

Looking Ahead

The district is trying to maintain the quality of its programs despite waning enrollment, though.

Last year, it created the new office of student achievement and accountability. The office does not tackle the enrollment issue per se, but clearly the issues of student achievement and school improvement are inextricably linked to parents' enrollment decisions.

And two school mergers have already been coordinated, and another is under way.

At the Tobin School, three programs were combined into one after parents decided this would be the best way for students to benefit from the school's unique offerings despite depressed enrollment.

Once renovations are completed at the Fitzgerald School, it will house its own sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders as well as those from the Haggerty School, another decision that resulted from parent negotiation.

Lastly, the district has asked the Fletcher and Maynard Schools to formulate a plan for a merger, based on both schools' drops in enrollment.

Though they could potentially cut down on the number of programs available to Cambridge parents, mergers may not be all bad.

Two district facilities, the Cambridgeport School and an administrative office, currently occupy rented spaces. Lenora Jennings, the district's executive director of student achievement and accountability, says because of this, mergers might actually be good for the district at this point.

"If two schools were to merge, that could potentially relieve the school system from having to use one of those rental facilities," Jennings says.

Simply because of declining enrollments, she explains, consolidation could help the district maximize its space.

"There are empty seats across the district, and merging two schools into one may cut down on the number of empty seats," she says.

Finding a Solution

As one of the main issues in this fall's School Committee race, these empty seats are getting a lot of attention from candidates.

Rather than definitively rejecting students for racial reasons, Nancy Walser suggests that schools set a period of time after which, if quotas are still not met, schools may fill their empty slots with students from the waiting list, without regard to their race.

"We have to preserve diversity, but we have to find a way to do that that doesn't chase people from our schools artificially because they're not the right race," Walser says.

For Jacqueline Miller, the key to satisfying parents and fixing the choice system lies merely in listening to parents--and she says evidence of what they want already exists.

"If you look at the distribution [among Cambridge's public elementaries], there are lots of schools that are highly subscribed to," she says. "It seems to me they ought to look at that and say, 'Should we make more schools like that?' "

Such an initiative could also help deflect dissatisfaction with the choice system by making all schools appealing.

"One thing we have to move away from in Cambridge is the sense that there are better schools and worse schools, that it's a lottery you either win or you lose," says Alice Turkel.

One factor keeping private schools head and shoulders above public in terms of personal attention to students is allotting more time to teachers, both through reducing class size and allowing teachers more free periods during the day.

"What Cambridge [public school system] needs is more time for professional development," Miller says. "Teachers need time to get together professionally, with their colleagues, in workshops, to go to meetings."

This, she explains, gives teachers a chance to collaborate, support each other and share strategies.

The school district has actually entered into a re-negotiation of teacher contracts, to consider an amendment that would pay teachers for a longer school day.

The current contract requires teachers to be in the school building 15 minutes before the bell in the morning, and to stay 10 minutes after the afternoon bell. They are paid only for this time.

"Very few teachers work just those hours," Walser says.

Harshbarger says he would like students, too, to spend more time at school.

"They need to offer extended-day programs, meaning drama, art, athletics, science programs, for all students after school," Harshbarger says.

Because of a rising standard of living in Cambridge, says Harshbarger, more and more students come from families in which both parents work, making programs like these essential.

These extended-day programs would be most consequential at the middle school level, "a time when you can identify what children are beginning to be good at," he says.

"If they're not excelling academically...they will become more confident in themselves because of their extended-day achievements, and their academic performance will be better," Harshbarger adds.

In addition to programmatic changes, Miller says she wants schools to do a better job of teaching study skills.

"I have to sit down with my kids and tell them what they need to do, say 'This is how you study for a test,' and 'This is how you write a paper,' " she says.

To help public schools combat the problem of scarce resources and measure up to their private competitors, Harshbarger suggests that they interact more with the intellectual community that surrounds them.

"We live in a city which is rich with college and university life," he says. "We need to make sure parents know we're taking full advantage of that."

Tooting Their Own Horn

But all the improvement in the world won't do a thing if parents don't know about them.

"One of the things the public schools can do is to launch a PR campaign," says school committee member Robin Harris, who is assistant principal at the Banneker Charter School. "There are some wonderful things happening in the public schools that the average parents is not aware of."

Harshbarger, too, says the district doesn't get enough kudos for what it already does right.

"We have to inform people that we have one of the best drama programs in the country, and an award-winning science program," he says.

Already, it seems there's a glimmer of hope.

"This year I saw an increase in the number of private school parents at the high school open house," D'Alessandro says. "We got some of them convinced to come back."

But D'Alessandro is by no means resting on her laurels when it comes to increasing enrollment.

"We're working diligently on it every day," she says.