St. Paul Public Schools tries to stem enrollment losses with marketing, outreach to parents

Yahoo

16-03-2025

On a snowy morning this winter, parents and students at Dayton's Bluff Elementary in St. Paul sat down with donuts and coffee for their monthly meeting with the principal.
Among budget discussions and questions, the parents began to share ideas to help with art projects at the school, which doesn't have an art teacher.
If enrollment numbers continue to grow and Dayton's Bluff has three classes at each grade level, the school can hire one, Principal Amanda Musachio told the group. That would take about 80 more enrollees, Musachio said at the time.
It's a possibility. Since last school year, the school has enrolled 30 more students than the year before – going from 271 to 301.
Dayton's Bluff is one of six schools in St. Paul Public Schools taking part in a multi-year district campaign to increase enrollment that includes extensive marketing efforts and reexamining how schools connect with families.
Traditional school districts like SPPS are just starting to become more focused on enrollment, said Nick LeRoy, chief enrollment officer and head of marketing with SchoolMint, a Louisiana-based company which specializes in helping districts improve enrollment and which has been working with the district on the campaign.
'And, to be honest with you, there's a little bit of a resistance that traditional public schools feel … they don't want to have to market their school. … But that's kind of how education is morphing, into more of that, I hate to say a free market sort of environment, but let's say one word — choice, and parental choice is really important,' LeRoy said.
During the morning meeting at Dayton's Bluff with the principal, St. Paul resident Rachel Tolo visited with her 5-year-old daughter, Sophie, as she weighed her education choices.
Tolo had attended another open house in the district beforehand and was interested in several other schools, including one with a language immersion program. While some schools she was considering were further from her home, she said she was interested because of what she read about Dayton's Bluff online.
Tolo also has considered non-public schools, in part because they offer schedules with half days or other options, she said.
'So cost is one, distance is another. And then I would say, for me, something that is important to me is that she's still really young and sending her off to school all day, every day, feels like a lot,' she said.
St. Paul's enrollment work might be paying off. The district saw an increase — around 890 students — in enrollment for the 2024-25 school year compared to last, according to numbers recently released by the Minnesota Department of Education. The district, which counts enrollment differently from the state, reported a 527 student increase.
Enrollment is the primary driver of a school district's budget, with nearly all revenue linked to enrollment, including state aid and local property taxes, according to SPPS.
While a one-year increase in enrollment does not equal a trend, it's the first year in a decade the district has had higher enrollment than the year before, said district spokesperson Erica Wacker.
'…That is very exciting for the district, and we know that there's still a lot of work to be done to attract families and to make sure that we have the education offerings that they want and deserve for their students,' Wacker said.
The change comes as the district works on its third phase of the $425,000 enrollment campaign, which comes from the district's general fund. It's unclear if the campaign will continue beyond phase three.
The share of St. Paul's school-age children enrolled in district schools has been dropping over the last decade. As of the 2024-25 school year, around 55% of the more than 59,000 students attending St. Paul schools in-person or online are attending St. Paul Public Schools, a drop of around 8% since the 2015-16 school year.
The losses for the state's second-largest district are largely due to competition from charter schools, as well as homeschooling and students picking private schools or neighboring districts through open enrollment.
St. Paul charter schools enroll the largest number of students after the St. Paul Public Schools district and have steadily grown in the last ten years.
In the 2024-25 school year, St. Paul charter schools, excluding online students, reported enrolling 16,537 students, or close to 31% of pre-kindergarten to 12th grade students enrolled in the city, according to data collected by the Minnesota Department of Education. With online students included, it was around 36% of students.
From the 2015-16 school year to the 2024-25 school year, the number of students enrolled in St. Paul charter schools in-person or online has increased by 6,374 students, according to the state.
The next largest share of St. Paul students outside of SPPS attend private schools or other school districts. The smallest number are homeschooled.
Because Minnesota has open enrollment, St. Paul residents also are able to enroll in other districts. In the last ten years, neighboring Roseville Area Schools and North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale School District have received the largest numbers of St. Paul students. The majority of non-resident students coming into SPPS have come from the North St. Paul-Maplewood Oakdale school district.
SPPS itself reports different enrollment numbers from the state for a few reasons. State numbers in this story are based on public schools with addresses listed in St. Paul in order to follow the same method used to find enrollment in other schools in the city. They should align closely with schools in the St. Paul Public School District, but some schools in the district actually list non-St. Paul addresses, according to the state. To see SPPS's own enrollment reports, go to spps.org/about/departments/research-evaluation-assessment/data-center/school-district-data/enrollment.
Some students, such as some preschoolers, are funded with district money — rather than state funds — so they are not included in state enrollment numbers, but are included in SPPS numbers. This school year, SPPS reported 33,589 total students enrolled. Last year, it reported 33,062.
With a total of $2.2 billion in new funding for the 2024-25 two-year budget, Minnesotan school districts saw a nearly 11% increase over the last state budget, the Pioneer Press reported in April. But despite the record funding, many school districts across the state still face budget shortfalls, including St. Paul.
The district's 2024-25 budget included a $108 million deficit, in part due to federal pandemic aid expiring, inflation and declining enrollment. The district projects a shortfall of approximately $51 million in next year's budget, which must be approved by the district Board of Education by the end of June.
More than 70% of metro-area school districts in Minnesota expected deficits last year, according to the Association of Metropolitan School Districts, and St. Paul had one of the largest.
State funding for the two-year budget gave a 4% increase to the per-student state funding formula in 2024-25 — tied to future inflation increases.
The total general fund expenditures per student pre-kindergarten to 12th grade for SPPS during the 2023-24 school year was $23,112. By comparison, the state average is $16,649 per pupil, according to the district.
As charter schools are public, state and federal governments help fund education in both charters and public school districts. However, charter schools receive less per pupil funding than traditional public schools, may not levy property taxes for funding and receive no funding from local property taxes, according to the Minnesota Association of Charter Schools.
General education revenue is the main source of operating funds for Minnesota's public schools. In the 2023-24 school year, the state provided approximately 66.4% of the total costs of elementary and secondary education, according to a November school finance guide by the Minnesota House Research Department. Local revenue sources, which are primarily property taxes and services fees, such as those for athletics, made up approximately 27.2% of operating revenues. The federal government provided approximately 5.4% of public schools' revenue.
The total adopted 2015-16 budget for the district was $697.8 million. In 2024-25, the total adopted budget was $1 billion.
Declines in per-pupil state aid have resulted in districts relying more heavily on local property tax levies to support budgets.
Local property taxes contribute to approximately 20% of SPPS's annual revenue, according to the district. In December, the St. Paul school board approved a property tax levy for the 2025-26 school year in the amount of $220.8 million, a 7.92% increase and the maximum allowed.
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Historically, the district has done annual marketing around school choice and enrollment periods, according to Wacker. Marketing has included an annual school choice fair, postcard mailings, school guide distribution, open houses and other events.
But, in fall 2022, a district enrollment committee began its campaign to stabilize enrollment. The committee included representatives from the school board, the teachers' union, community members, as well as members of different district departments.
While phase one of the campaign took a district-wide approach to increasing enrollment, phase two focused on six schools selected by the district. Phase three continues previous social media efforts for six schools.
As part of the campaign, LeRoy acted as a 'secret shopper,' to see how easy it is for a potential parent to find a school online, check out its offerings and book a tour. LeRoy then attended posing as a prospective parent. Principals of schools received feedback on the shopping experience and areas for improvement.
'So we did the secret shopper, met with the principal, did an evaluation on that, then we built a more enrollment-focused website for them that kind of talked about why you should choose this school. Schools are great, but oftentimes they're not good at describing how good they are,' LeRoy said.
For Dayton's Bluff, a feature that makes them stand out is their focus on the whole family, said Musachio. That includes having family feedback on curriculum and offering dental clinics, free household goods and adult classes at the school.
Marketing themselves is an area charter schools typically have more experience with. While many traditional urban public school districts are just beginning to recognize the need for marketing, those efforts have been a necessity for charter and private schools, LeRoy said.
'(Private schools) for the longest time, this is how they had to market themselves in order to get tuition-paying families,' LeRoy said. 'Then the public charter schools — again, these are schools of choice, people have to actually choose them — and so they're probably the next level in terms of sophistication around marketing and advertising.'
This year's campaign for phase three targets enrollment at six schools: Riverview Spanish/English Dual Immersion Program, Cherokee Heights Elementary, Dayton's Bluff, Highwood Hills Elementary, Chelsea Heights Elementary and Crossroads Elementary.
SPPS looks at several types of data to predict its enrollment rate, including birth rates, charter school openings or closing and migration in or out of local neighborhoods, as well as historic enrollment trends, according to the district.
The district considers stabilized enrollment to be when decreases are at 1.5% or less.
In 2023, consultant and former state demographer Hazel Reinhardt presented to the Anoka-Hennepin school board, which oversees the largest district in the state, on the demographics that can impact enrollment.
According to Reinhardt, kindergarten classes in public schools have been smaller than pre-pandemic levels in part due to lower birth rates, housing mixes that yield fewer students and alternative schooling options.
Immigration from abroad also slowed, a factor Minnesota has been dependent on for its population in the last 25 years, Reinhardt said during the 2023 meeting. And, more young adults are moving out of the state, she said.
'So we have fewer and fewer students who are in St. Paul, paired with a larger and larger number of schools for them to choose from,' said SPPS board member Uriah Ward, who helped develop the campaign.
Statewide, Minnesota's total public school enrollment peaked in 2020 and is in a period of slow decline, according to the state Legislature. At the same time, charter school enrollment is continuing to grow at a modest pace.
Lower birth rates and growing school choice initiatives, such as private school vouchers, are impacting schools across the country, LeRoy said.
'You're seeing lots of chronic absenteeism as well, and so we're kind of in an enrollment crisis, if you will,' LeRoy said.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, total public elementary and secondary school enrollment is projected to be lower in fall 2031 than in fall 2022 nationally, primarily due to declines in the school-age population. Minnesota is projected to have a 2% enrollment drop in that time period compared to the national projected average drop of 5%.
At SPPS, the district has focused on the four Ps: Program, Principal, Place and Promotion. This means school programming, training principals to market their school and connect with families, making it easy for families to find information and locations for schools and how well the school is promoted.
'When we hear from families and we ask them what they're looking for and what's most important to them … the number one is curriculum,' Wacker said.
That's followed by available transportation, school schedules and afterschool programs, Wacker said.
A consultant helped Dayton's Bluff work on its marketing materials, such as including school start and end times on flyers and working with stakeholders to pinpoint the school's strengths to market to families. Work also included making the enrollment process as seamless as possible online and at the school.
Now, the school focuses on enrollment all year, rather than only during enrollment periods, Musachio said.
An ongoing challenge with enrollment efforts is that families want consistency in curriculum and schools cannot always guarantee that, especially as enrollment fluctuates. Schools also do not always have staff specifically dedicated to enrollment or family engagement.
The campaign has, however, focused on how principals like Musachio play an important role in enrollment efforts.
'And the promotional stuff is great, and you need that, but you need to have the principal who's really engaged and out there. You need to have the programming that families want. So, you can't just put a flashy ad on Facebook and expect that to do it. You need to have the backbone in place to live up to what the ads are selling,' Wacker said.
Whether or not the enrollment campaign continues, schools can continue to use what they've learned from it, Musachio said.
'And so I think that the data that we have from that, the marketing materials that we have from that, the lessons we've learned from it, will still continue to help us, even though the official (campaign) is over,' Musachio said.
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