Pittsfield Schools Grapple With Enrollment Drop
 Superintendent Jason McCandless said enrollment at some Pittsfield schools is unbalanced, while the overall number of students in the district has dropped. |
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — School officials are mulling the implications of a new report that indicates the district has 170 students less than it had this time last year.
At a meeting of the Pittsfield Public School Committee on Wednesday, Superintendent Jason "Jake" McCandless presented data from an annual state enrollment report
"Our school-age population across the county continues to decline," said McCandless, who cited rising awareness of an overall population decrease throughout the region recently. "This is a conversation that is taking place, or should be taking place, in every school committee meeting across all of Berkshire County, and across most of Massachusetts."
According to statistical data, the city's school district has seen a 14 percent decline in student population over the past 20 years, though this is significantly less than the 21 percent decrease seen regionally across Berkshire County schools. Only McCann Technical School saw an increase during this time, rising by 4 percent.
While regional population decrease accounts for some of the drop seen in the Pittsfield district, McCandless said a variety of other factors influence the equation, particularly the disproportionate distribution of school choice transfers. Currently, 428 Pittsfield students have opted for other public schools in the district, while only 98 have entered from outside towns.
Added to this are 177 more Pittsfield students who are attending the Berkshire Arts and Technology Public Charter School, for a total of 605 city students learning outside of the district, not including those who are home-schooled or attend private schools.
In an effort to get a better handle on this uneven distribution of school choice, the superintendent has convened a study group to look at the factors leading local families to choice out of the district.
"We're going to dig in with those families and try to understand why," he said. "Not in order to give them a hard time or question them, but to understand how we can get better."
McCandless said that one important element that may need to be addressed is the class sizes at some of Pittsfield's elementary schools, which have grown at some schools as neighborhood enrollment has become unbalanced in recent years.
"I think that we have to take a look at very strategic, specific and well-reasoned redistricting," he told the committee.
Committee Vice Chairman Daniel Elias cautioned that the department should seek a "humane approach" to any eventual redistricting, particularly in regard to the district's policy of allowing students to attend a school in a neighborhood the family no longer lives in, if an older sibling already attends that school.
"I think it would be very hard for a parent to have children at two different elementary schools," Elias said.
McCandless said any redistricting that occurs should be of a "surgical nature."
"We're working hard to strike a balance," he assured the committee.
Furthermore, he said that while numbers have shrunk, this does not necessarily translate to budgetary savings, such as personnel reductions.
"Our challenge is that while the school-aged population continues to decline, the needs of these student populations do not decline," McCandless told the committee. "In fact, I think you can make a case that the needs have increased to some degree."
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