JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Amid a dip in enrollment numbers in recent years, Duval County Public Schools has been running ads to try and recruit students to join the district.
Increasing enrollment is one of the key goals of the district’s new superintendent Dr. Christopher Bernier.
“We really have to really look at why our students are leaving, and how we can get them back and how we can keep from losing them in the first place,” Bernier said after he got the job.
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According to a presentation earlier this year, charter schools have had a significant impact on enrollment, especially at the middle school level. With more parents sending their children to private and charter schools, the district said it has lost about 30,000 students over the last 10 years.
“From cap and gown to college-bound, another reason to choose Duval County Public Schools,” the 30-second ad says while highlighting various student successes. “The unmatched student experience, another reason to choose Duval County Public Schools.”
But it won’t be clear if the ads are making an impact until later this year.
The district said it had 103,418 students enrolled in district schools for the 2023-24 school year but it won’t know the actual student enrollment for 2024-25 year until mid-September.
They also when they’ll have a clearer picture of the impact of the enrollment initiatives.
News4JAX did speak with some people at a local park about the advertisements.
Bernande said she recently helped her mom transfer her sister from a public school to a charter school in order to have smaller class sizes.
We showed her the video, but she said it’s not something that would entice her to enroll her sister back in the public school system.
While the video didn’t entice her, she did mention it made her realize her sister will miss out on certain things public schools have to offer.
“I thought about those things, if she was in public school she could be more active in sports and be more involved,” Bernande said.
However, she did say she would be open to helping her sister get back into DCPS in the future if things like the student-to-teacher ratio improved.
The district reported it is losing about 3,000 students a year and has plans to leave hundreds of staff positions vacant and possibly consolidate dozens of schools in the coming years to “rightsize” the district.
DCPS will have 402 fewer school-based instructional positions this upcoming school year than it did last year, according to a district spokesperson.
Class sizes are also projected to increase as the district deals with severe budget shortages. Student enrollment is directly tied to funding.
DCPS’ tentative budget shows overall funding has dropped by $258 million for the upcoming school year, including a loss of $185 million from federal sources such as COVID-19 relief dollars.
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The tentative budget shows DCPS state and local funding for the upcoming school year actually increased by $95 million, but nearly half of that money, $44 million, went toward a program that provides private school tuition through vouchers, which are available to all families, regardless of income. And $33 million went toward charter schools, leaving traditional public schools with $18 million of the increased funding.