Total student enrollment in Brookline’s public schools remains roughly 10% below pre-pandemic levels, but Brookline High School has an all-time high number of students, according to data released last week by the school district.
The data, which was collected on October 1, shows that a gradual post-pandemic resurgence in enrollment in recent years has halted. This year’s district enrollment of 7,039 was 21 students lower than last year’s, following two years of small increases.
Overall enrollment continues to fall well below projections conducted in the midst of planning for the high school, Driscoll, and Pierce construction projects. In a 2018 report, the district projected enrollment for this school year would be 7,914, nearly 900 students above the actual count.
The newly-built Driscoll School, which has a capacity of 800 students, posted an enrollment of 510 students, up from 456 last year, making it the only K-8 school to see an increase in the number of pupils.
The district’s enrollment was 7,777 in the 2019-20 school year, before dropping to 6,891 in 2020-21. That 11% reduction was greater than drops of 3.3% state-wide and 2.8% nationally in 2020.
The district’s enrollment is approximately 2% below the 7,195-student projection calculated in April.
“There wasn’t as much growth as we thought,” said Meaghan Geaney, the district’s coordinator of registration and enrollment, although she noted enrollment typically peaks in the winter months.
Geaney described the enrollment numbers overall as “static” but said there have been some noteworthy changes in certain grade bands.
Enrollment in kindergarten through eighth grade decreased from 4,717 students last year to 4,610. The biggest dip came in kindergarten, which decreased by 38 students, or 7%.
“This is the smallest kindergarten class I have seen in my tenure here,” said Geaney, who has worked for the Public Schools of Brookline since 2015.
Enrollment grew at the high school by 88 students, bringing it to 2,173 total students, the highest level since state data collection began in 1994.
The record high at BHS is due to a large cohort that had been moving through the grades in recent years, as well as some students who had left the system returning to Brookline public schools, Superintendent Linus Guillory said in an interview.
“It’s great that our high school has the recognition. If parents or families move out during the middle years, they want to return back for that Brookline High School diploma, and I think that’s a testament to our organization,” Guillory said.
As for the gap between the capacity and enrollment at the new Driscoll School, Guillory said he expects that gap to close.
“We’re actually in a position of growth, with Brookline being a highly desirable community as well as school system,” he said. “We anticipate that now that the building is open and those families that may have wanted to move away during construction may see this as an opportunity to return back to the system.”
Guillory also pointed to Town Meeting’s recent approval of a rezoning plan that could bring hundreds of new housing units to Brookline over time.
“It actually is a good thing for us to have capacity at this juncture in our school system,” he said. “That’s a better problem to have than to have a building that’s overcrowded.”
The Pierce School, which will be demolished and rebuilt starting in 2024 or 2025, saw its enrollment drop from 705 last year to 668 this year.
Enrollment decreased slightly or stayed level year-over-year at each of the other K-8 schools.