AL.com’s Education Lab team is supported by individual donors and grants. Learn more about our work, sign up for our newsletter and donate today.
Preliminary numbers counting the average number of students attending school during the first 20 days of the current school year were made available in early November, but full enrollment numbers – a more complete picture of the student body – weren’t made available until recently.
The Alabama Education Lab crunched the numbers, comparing them not only to last year but to years prior to the pandemic. Here’s what you should know.
Alabama’s public schools gained students overall compared to last school year, but not all 138 districts saw an increase.
Statewide, enrollment is up: 725,900 compared to 716,084 last year, a gain of more than 9,800 students. That increase makes up for the 9,800 students lost from 2019-20 to 2020-21, but numbers show enrollment shifts from pre-pandemic years.
Overall, 78 school districts enrolled more students at the start of this school year than were enrolled last year. Most of those gains were proportionally small, anywhere from one additional student in both Gadsden and Haleyville City school districts, to a few hundred in the larger school districts of Baldwin, Shelby and Jefferson counties.
The majority of districts — 45 of the 78 — seeing enrollment gains were city districts, but 35 county districts saw an increase, too. Geographically, the districts that saw gains are spread throughout the state, with clusters in north and south Alabama.
Enrollment declined in 56 school districts, with eight school districts enrolling 100 or more fewer students than last year. Birmingham City saw the biggest decline in enrollment, with 504 fewer students enrolled this year, for a total of 20,345 students districtwide. Selma City had the second-largest decline, enrolling 293 fewer students this year, leaving 2,390 students enrolled in the district.
Four school districts — Bullock, Henry, and Randolph counties and Satsuma City — have the same number of students enrolled this year as last year.
Statewide virtual schools and charter schools continued to enroll more students.
Limestone County and Eufaula City — home to Alabama Connections Academy and Alabama Virtual Academy, respectively — saw big increases again this year as some students continued to shift toward permanent remote learning.
Limestone County added 2,300 students district-wide, with 2,100 of those students enrolling in the virtual school. Alabama Connections Academy now is the largest school in the state, with 6,834 students this year, up from 4,727 the year before. During the 2019-20 school year, there were 2,478 students enrolled, meaning the school nearly tripled enrollment during the pandemic.
Eufaula City added 339 students district-wide, but their four brick-and-mortar schools all saw declines of between 58 and 87 students. The district’s virtual school enrolled 443 more students than last year, and 1,360 more students than during the 2019-20 school year. Total enrollment in Alabama Virtual Academy is 4,386, making it the state’s second largest school. (Hoover High School ranks third, with 2,716 students).
The state’s newest statewide virtual school, Chickasaw City’s Destinations Career Academy, enrolled 1,661 students this year. This is the first year it has been designated a separate school, but Superintendent David Wofford told AL.com the virtual school enrolled around 1,500 students last year. The district, like Eufaula, saw enrollment at its four brick-and-mortar schools decline. Some of that decline likely is due to accounting for virtual students separately this year.
All of the state’s four pre-2021 charter schools showed enrollment increases, as all added one or more grade levels to their schools this year. One charter school opened at the start of the 2020-21 school year, and three more opened this year, bringing total charter school enrollment to 2,986, up from 1,948 last year.
Most districts have not returned to pre-pandemic enrollment levels.
Statewide, 86 of Alabama’s 138 districts have fewer students enrolled than in the 2019-20 school year, pre-pandemic. Collectively, they enrolled 14,000 fewer students this year compared to the 2019-20 school year.
Those losses range from 1,717 fewer students in Mobile County — the state’s largest school district — to a loss of just one student in Winston County from 2019-20 to 2021-22.
Enrollment losses were steepest in Conecuh County (22% fewer students), Choctaw County (14% fewer), Selma City (13% fewer) and Wilcox County (12% fewer). However, three of these districts already were experiencing lower enrollments year over year prior to the pandemic.
There are 4,100 more ninth graders this year than last year.
A broad look at the big numbers doesn’t shed any light on why there are so many ninth graders but seeing there are 3,900 more ninth graders this year than there were eighth graders last year and there are 2,500 fewer tenth graders this year than there were ninth graders last year makes it appear that many of last year’s ninth graders did not advance to the 10th grader this year.
What that means for graduation rates down the road is unclear.
There has been a steady decline in the number of 12th graders, year over year, since a high of 52,848 seniors in 2017-18. There are 50,345 seniors enrolled this year, about 2,000 fewer students than were in 11th grade last year.
The racial makeup of Alabama’s public school enrollment continues to shift.
Black students and white students still vastly outnumber students of other races, but the number of students of both races has declined since the 2019-20 school year. There are 240 fewer Black students and 7,376 fewer white students enrolled in public schools than there were before the pandemic.
Native American enrollment decreased by 254 students from 2019-20 to 2021-22, a drop of 4%, the biggest overall percentage drop among races.
Hispanic student enrollment increased by 6,906, or 10%, during the same time period.
In a break from previous reporting, race was not given for 613 students. That category — “not reported” — has not been used since the 2010-11 school year.
Here is the racial and ethnic breakdown of students in Alabama’s public schools over the past 10 years.
While public school enrollment rebounded to some degree, it’s unclear where all of the missing students went. Alabama doesn’t keep numbers on how many students are in private school or are homeschooling.
Parents angry about school mask mandates said they planned to pull their children out of public schools. Other parents, worried protections against coronavirus weren’t strong enough, said they would pull their children out, too.
The table below shows enrollment for each district over the past five years. Charter schools are reported as a separate district.
The map below shows the big picture view of whether a school district enrolled more or fewer students than last year, and a comparison of this year and the 2019-20 school year, pre-pandemic. Click here if you are unable to see the maps.