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Revere enrollment falls below 7,000; officials warn of budget pressure
Summary
At the Sept. 9 Committee of the Whole meeting, district officials said total enrollment stood at 6,908 — the first drop below 7,000 in more than a decade — and said lower enrollment will create budget challenges for next school year.
Revere School Committee leaders and district staff said total enrollment stood at 6,908 on Sept. 9, a decline the superintendent called the first dip below 7,000 in more than a decade and a likely driver of budget stress next year.
The superintendent, Dr. Kelly, told the Committee of the Whole that prekindergarten enrollment is 138, kindergarten is 457 and the district-wide count for grade 2 is 503; grade 3 is 491 and grade 4 is 504. At the high school level, Dr. Kelly said the district still has “1,961 and 130 kids are at CityLab,” a total of about 2,000 students at the secondary level. “If you go all the way to the back page, you'll see for the first time in over a decade, our full our total enrollment has dipped below 7,000. We're at 6,908 right now,” Dr. Kelly said.
Why it matters: district and committee members said lower enrollment will reduce state and local funding available for schools and called the decline “a bad omen for our budget for next school year,” language used by Dr. Kelly at the meeting. Committee members asked staff to continue monitoring figures and to report updated official counts as they become available.
District staff explained the enrollment tally reported on Oct. 1 is submitted to the state on that date but “the October 1 enrollment numbers don't actually come out until about mid November,” because the state processes and finalizes the reported data before publishing it. The superintendent said the district will submit the required October 1 data on schedule and will continue to provide interim updates to the committee while preparing for the budget season.
Committee members and staff discussed the causes of the decline. Dr. Kelly said the district is seeing families relocate and noted immigration-related movements as one factor: “I think that we're seeing students leave the district… I think it has a lot to do with the current tenor around immigration,” Dr. Kelly said. Committee members also noted regional declines in enrollment and said families are leaving for charter and private schools outside the city.
After the presentation the committee asked staff to provide more detailed school-level data, including counts by school and any day-to-day variance, to help the committee prepare for budget deliberations. A committee member asked staff to provide the finalized October 1 numbers when the state publishes them; staff reiterated the district will report them once the state posts its official counts.
The district said it will continue enrollment monitoring throughout the year and flagged the decline as a factor that will affect appropriation and carry-forward decisions scheduled for discussion at the October meeting.
