When I was looking up enrollment figures for Tucson-area districts for my last post, I got to wondering, how many students has TUSD lost over the years? I found that the TUSD website supplied me with all the information I needed. It has a page, School Enrollment by Gender & Ethnicity on Any Day, where you can find the enrollment for the district or for individual schools for any day from 1996 on. It was just a matter of plugging in dates and days, then looking up the information.
I looked at three different points in the school year for every year since 2000 to see which yielded the most reliable data: the 20th day—about a month in, time enough for the beginning-of-the-year enrollment to settle down—the 100th day—that’s the magic day the state uses to determine a district’s yearly enrollment—and the 175th day—basically the end of the school year. Of the three, I found the 175th day to be the most reliable, with the fewest random ups and downs to distort the data. The bar chart I created with the data is below. The number of students the district lost each year is at the top of the corresponding bar.
You can look over the chart yourself, but let me summarize what I gleaned from the information.
• TUSD enrollment at the end of the 2000-1 school year was 61,280. At the end of the 2014-15 school year, it was 48,078. That’s a loss of 13,202 students, an average of 880 students a year.
• Until the 2007-8 school year, the yearly student losses were generally in the 200-300 range. Then, for the next five years, the losses were four to seven times higher.
• The last three years didn’t follow a steady pattern, going from a loss of 841 to 1436 and back to 826.
• It’s too early to tell if enrollment trends are changing one way or another since Supt. Sanchez began at TUSD. The 2013-14 school year was his first, and it had a 1436 loss from the previous year. However, that loss was more-or-less consistent from the beginning of the year. On the 20th day, there was a 1533 loss from the previous year, a loss Sanchez inherited from Supt. Pedicone. By the end of Sanchez’s first year, the loss was cut back by 100, but that kind of fluctuation is typical, so it doesn’t mean much one way or another. For the last complete school year, 2014-15, the district’s loss looks like it did two years earlier, but one year’s enrollment data doesn’t mean much in itself. The figures over the next few years will tell us more about enrollment trends during Sanchez’s tenure.
This article appears in Jul 30 – Aug 5, 2015.
Thank you, David — you are providing so many useful charts and graphs these days!
While you’re at it, could you please provide a bar graph showing trends in the TUSD Superintendent’s total compensation (including bonuses, expense allowances, paid vacation days that may be cashed in, etc.) for the period covered above and include projected compensation for the remaining period of the current Superintendent’s contract?
Then, it would be helpful to have a chart comparing enrollment decline rates for the previous school year with Superintendent compensation increase rates for the following school year. How has the ratio of enrollment decline : compensation increase changed since the 2000-2001 school year?
Thank you David but I’m not sure we can glean much from only tusd numbers. It could simply be a shift in demographics. Have all pima county schools lost students at a similar rate?
Interesting that not there is no mention of Adelita Grijalva since she’s been on the board since 2002, attributing ALL of the decline to her tenure.
Why would anyone send their kids to TUSD? The leadership conferences with communists, socialists and terrorists, kids are radicalized to overthrow the US government, classes taught in a foreign language. It truly is an awful environment, unless you’re one of their target market, the illegal from Mexico.
And if you’re an American citizen, want to learn and speak English, love your country, TUSD is NOT the place for your children.
The Grijalva’s along with all of the politicos in Tucson and Pima County have made one bad assumption in their ‘browning’ of TUSD and their aggressive marketing to illegals to replace white flight.
With the leftist population of Tucson and their radical environmentalism, we have achieved their dream state – sustainability – which actually means no growth.
No growth means no jobs. No jobs means Tucson is the 5th poorest city in the nation and guaranteed to remain on the bottom. We don’t even have jobs that illegals will do!
Why do people keep giving me assignments? If the information is out there, find it and send it to me. I have plenty enough assignments of my own to keep me busy.
Tucson, meet yourself and your future.
When will liberals take responsibility for their actions and policies?
Oh, just like TUSD, they won’t. And besides, the person killed is just another white person, and we know to liberals that All Lives Don’t Matter.
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An illegal immigrant with four prior arrests is accused of attacking and sexually assaulting a California woman, who later died.
Police have arrested 29-year-old Victor Aureliano Martinez Ramirez in connection with the heinous crime.
They say that the undocumented immigrant attacked 64-year-old Marilyn Pharis with a hammer and sexually assaulted her in her Santa Maria home. She died Saturday, eight days after the attack.
http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/08/05/cops-illegal-immigrant-attacked-sexually-assaulted-california-woman-who-later-died
How many illegal alien students in TUSD and other Pima County Schools. Taxpayers are never told this least of all by Safier!
How much does this unfunded expense and that for HC cost? Obama’s Policy is to dump tjem on us and let the whirlwind engulf us. Hoped for change solved.
I go back to 1944 in Tucson. I’m a product of what was Tucson District No. 1 from 1949 through 1961–Ft. Lowell, Alice Vail, Roskruge and Catalina. It was a good district then and I found myself well prepared for college (MA+). Sadly, the exodus is due to a host of reasons, but the bottom line is the district is simply not now getting the job done. It’s easy to point fingers, blame the legislature and go into a defensive crouch. Parents are not blind. Parents with options are voting with their kids’ feet. Those who perceive no choices or don’t care keep their kids in TUSD. TUSD has nobody to blame but itself. It starts at the top with the Board and lack of effective leadership. It goes on to the teacher unions and the ‘reformers’ and their crazy ideas of what an education should be. It isn’t just the kids. Fifty percent of educators leave the profession within five years. They come to the same conclusion as do the many parents–public education in general is not hacking it. Kids are being graduated from high school woefully unprepared. As with almost everything else, the situation has been politicized and PC’d to the point of abject failure. For me, it’s disheartening to see a once fine school district go down the tubes. The kids suffer which means we all ultimately suffer. For example, companies have decided not to locate to Tucson due to its abysmal schools. My kids went to private school in another state for these same reasons. Should I ever have to oversee my grandkids’ educational fate, they will never set foot in a TUSD school as long as the current situation exists (and, if anything, is getting worse).
We have jobs David. This is your job.
He would never provide answers to the questions asked because they are a direct indictment of the total failure of TUSD under the regime of the Grijalva’s of whom the author continues to make excuses for and support.
To liberals, “enlightened” means see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Just keep the tax dollars flowing.
You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the winds blow.
Between 2000 and 2015 attendance in TUSD schools declined by 22%, bad enough. But the span between 2007 and the current year accounts for nearly 85% of the total decline (2000–2015). During that period over 11,000 of the 13,000 students fled/disappeared.
My tea leaves tell me TUSD is in deep trouble with declining student enrollments directly tied to revenue from the state leading to less money to budget and the near impossibility of attracting even beginning certified teachers to the district. (See Safier’s earlier mangling of data in his piece earlier this week on “TUSD teacher retention is not really as bad as it looks compared with other Tucson districts – or maybe it is”). The real questions are: did the other districts in the Tucson area experience similar declines in enrollment and if not, what has made TUSD the leader in lost boys and girls?
Do we need a few more years to see the true effects of Sanchez’ tenure on student enrollment? No. Hint: the worst of the decline in enrollment predates Sanchez and further declines will likely continue after his departure. The issue is not Sanchez, sorry David. The issue is the deteriorating conditions in TUSD under how many ( 3, 4?) superintendents since the dam broke in 2007. It is doubtful if, as a result of Sanchez’s improvements to TUSD tens of thousands of students will flock to the district. It is equally unlikely that parents will elect to keep their kids in TUSD because, hey, Sanchez is doing such a great job turning things around.
According to the US Census Bureau the school age population (kids 5-18) in the city of Tucson:
2000: 84416
2010: 85566
2013: 84130
The number of students in the area has not changed dramatically. One change that I can think of is the massive growth and expansion of the Vail District, who poached students and teachers from east side TUSD schools starting in the late 90’s.
Vail School District has grown from 1000 students in 1990 to over 12000 in 2014.
Have other school districts behaved in a similar way? We know that enrollment numbers = money and TUSD is not just competing with private schools.
Maybe it has nothing to do with TUSD at all…. Most of the growth and development in the metro area has taken place on the periphery in areas like Vail and Oro Valley. These communities have new infrastructure, big cheap housing, new shopping centers and importantly most of the job growth our community has seen. Those who could afford to move to these newer areas have, and their children now are enrolled in those districts (like Vail) and many good teachers left for these brand new schools.
I am not convinced that TUSD could have done anything to stop this. This is a economic migration issue and TUSD was left with a low income/low English speaking population that is more costly and difficult to educate. The private schools are just another nail in an already sealed casket.
“Why do people keep giving me assignments? If the information is out there, find it and send it to me. I have plenty enough assignments of my own to keep me busy.”
Safari ~ You are such an a-hole …
What, Again, I don’t understand your animus against TUSD and, it seems, all public institutions. Although I have all sorts of quite vocal critiques of the district, I am offended every time someone says “Why would anyone ever have a kid in TUSD”? Who are you people who hate it so much? I don’t hear ANY constructive ideas for change, just a lot of hatred. Frustration, I can certainly understand. Anger, I can certainly understand. But in the same way that someone paid for your education with their taxes, if you are a product of public schools, you pay for someone else’s education with your taxes. Thats not socialism or consorting with communism. Thats what this country has done for ages. Who would have a kid in TUSD if they had an option? I would, DESPITE the administration (we’ve been in for almost 12 years and it just seems to get worse), DESPITE the school board (ditto) and DESPITE the budget cuts. I think my child benefits directly from the diversity of students in the district, which is looking somewhat like the world at large–with white people on a tiny and shrinking island, aging away, in a sea of younger people of many skin tones, some from other countries who speak other languages and have other life experiences and some from here. Those are the people with whom he will build a future. The sooner he joins them and works with them, the better. By the time he grows up fully, the tiny island that I live on will be even tinier. I definitely want him to know how to swim in and be a part of the sea surrounding it! With all the complaints, and with all other variables held constant, there is no evidence that either charters or private schools actually add that much to overall learning from the public school system. For my kid, who I believe is getting a decent education, I’ll take the diversity and life experiences to be gained by going to the public schools any day.I, like many many others , CHOOSE public schools and work my bondooni off to try to improve them. And I am offended by any implication that I’m only there because I don’t have a choice.
I’m sure the declining enrollment statistics given by David in this article are correct, but they have little meaning unless we also look at Charter school numbers and we will probably find some of the missing students-but not all of them. To state or imply that attendance is based on a supervisor’s managerial skills and his salary is an assumption.
As we know by now a number of TUSD schools have closed completely because the neighborhoods in which these schools are located are aging= fewer and fewer new students, so the likelihood of increasing the enrollment is small, because those schools that are closed are elementary schools which “feed” the TUSD population. My observation would be that the demographics and Tucson’s poor economy have an effect on the numbers. As we continuously elect governors and legislators that sabotage our school systems and help to keep it close to the bottom of national rankings we are really fooling ourselves to assume that a supervisor for one district will make a difference. Folks should really stop obsessing about the TUSD school board and instead should start taking closer looks at the miserable test scores for virtually ALL of our schools.
The last time I checked (about 5 years ago), charter schools within TUSD boundaries had a total enrollment of about 12,000 students – so the declining TUSD district enrollment is pretty much accounted for. I believe that during their K-12 career, about one in five students is dissatisfied enough to move to a charter. It could be the result of a single unresolved incident. Charters started some pretty aggressive advertising and their numbers have increased dramatically since 1996.
I worked for TUSD during this period and tried to raise the alarm as well as suggest competitive programs to attract and retain students.
As others have suggested…re; Vail, Oro Valley, etc…
Follow the MONEY!
Arizona is about nothing if it’s not about the already rich getting richer…
You have a sanctuary city with sanctuary schools.
Please take responsibility for your decisions. This is on you.
I noticed that there was a dramatic drop in enrollment after 2010, when Jan Brewer went after Illegal Aliens.
Did the loss of Mexican-Americans dramatically affect this decline, as it did with sales tax revenue.
Just wondering.
Great Presentation, by the way.
I see why enrollment at TUSD is declining. I know for a fact, that if your child blatantly fails a course – mandatory or elective – TUSD will enroll them in the online program, AGAVE, and essentially, “push” them through the system. The kids talk and discover this loophole, and make no effort to turn in homework or to study in order to pass exams and get good grades. In 2015, only 54% were accepted to four year colleges. It is schools like TUSD that are allowing mediocrity in our academic institutions.