Officials: ESOL enrollment dropping

By Amanda Stewart

Published: March 16, 2008

School officials in all three area school districts have noticed a decline in enrollment of English for Speakers of Other Languages students since the beginning of the school year.

Officials in Prince William county said it’s too soon to know for certain what is causing the decline.

But officials in Manassas and Manassas Park said economic factors such as changes in the housing and job markets appear to be driving ESOL students, many of whom are Hispanic, out of the area.

The anti-illegal immigration resolution passed in Prince William County also appears to be driving some Hispanic families away, Manassas Park officials said.

Since official enrollment counts for the school year were taken on Sept. 30, about 630 ESOL students have left Prince William County schools, school division spokesman Ken Blackstone said.

That’s about 4.7 percent of the 13,409 ESOL students who were enrolled at the beginning of the year.

But, there are still about 900 more ESOL students enrolled in the county schools now than were enrolled during the 2006-2007 school year, when there were 11,847 ESOL students as of Sept. 30.

Some community members have pointed to the county’s anti-illegal immigration resolution to explain the drop in enrollment.

But Blackstone said it’s too soon for school officials to tell why the decline has happened or even if there is a decline at all.

“People are trying to connect dots that you can’t connect,” Blackstone said. “There are just too many variables.”

Official enrollment counts are only taken on Sept. 30, so it’s not possible to compare this month’s enrollment with enrollment at the same time last year, Blackstone said.

“This is just a snapshot in time and enrollment numbers, of course, fluctuate every day,” Blackstone said. “We have people leaving and we still have people enrolling every day.”

In Manassas City Public Schools, 123 ESOL students have left since Sept. 30, said Michaelene Meyer, deputy superintendent for curriculum and instruction.

At the beginning of the year, there were 2,190 ESOL students enrolled in Manassas city schools. As of Feb. 28, when Manassas school officials conducted an unofficial enrollment count, there were 2,067 ESOL students, Meyer said. That’s a decrease of about 5.6 percent.

“Enrollment is down this year and enrollment was down last year,” Meyer said.

At the beginning of the year, Manassas school officials were already reporting a decline in ESOL enrollment. About 100 fewer ESOL students enrolled in Manassas schools at the beginning of this school year than enrolled during the 2006-2007 school year, according to enrollment statistics provided by the Manassas schools at the beginning of the year.

In Manassas, it seems to be mainly economic factors that are driving the ESOL students, most of whom are Hispanic, away, Meyer said.

“What our schools are reporting to us is that people are leaving because of the loss of the job market. People have lost their jobs, people have lost their homes,” said Meyer who added that many homes in Manassas are now vacant.

Manassas Park City Schools, which conduct an informal enrollment count at the end of each month, are seeing the same trend, Superintendent Thomas DeBolt said.

At the beginning of the year Manassas Park schools had 712 ESOL students.

As of Feb. 29, there were 625 ESOL students in the city’s schools.

“That’s a pretty good decline,” DeBolt said. “And it correlates to a decline in the number of Latino students.”

DeBolt said three main factors seem to be contributing to the decline in ESOL and Latino students in Manassas Park schools: subprime mortgages that resulted in many people losing their houses, the downturn in the housing market which resulted in the loss of many jobs in the area and the anti-illegal immigration resolution passed in Prince William County which has concerned many immigrant parents.
“I can’t say exactly how much of an impact this is having, but Prince William County’s immigration crackdown has a lot of Latino parents concerned,” DeBolt said.