Over the past five years, Fort Worth has been one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, welcoming tens of thousands of new residents each year.

During the same period, the Fort Worth Independent School District has been one of the hardest hit in the nation by enrollment declines, forcing officials to make tough decisions about the future of some of its campuses.

The disparity is driven by a complex array of factors, some of which aren’t directly related to the school district. But no matter the reason, district officials say shrinking enrollment leaves Fort Worth ISD in a difficult position.

The decline in enrollment in Fort Worth ISD is a part of a broader national trend: Since the beginning of the pandemic, public school districts across the country have seen their class rolls shrink as a growing number of students leave for charter schools, private schools and home-schooling. Compounding the problem are birth rates that never fully recovered after the Great Recession.

FWISD mulls school closures after enrollment decline

Fort Worth ISD’s enrollment declined from 87,233 students in 2016 to 72,783 students in 2023 — a drop of about 17%. Last September, the school board approved a $2 million study of the district’s capacity, including “rightsizing recommendations” that are expected to include campus closures.

Last month, the district appeared on a list of 24 school districts at highest risk of school closures published by the education news site The 74. The list, which also included Houston ISD, Austin ISD and San Antonio’s Northside ISD, noted that all 24 districts had heavy concentrations of campuses where enrollment dropped by 20% or more between the 2019-20 and 2021-22 school years. About 13% of Fort Worth ISD’s campuses had enrollment declines of 20% or more.

District officials have pointed to growing competition from charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated, as one factor driving enrollment declines. During the 2022-23 school year, 17,883 students who lived in the Fort Worth ISD boundaries attended school in another district or charter school, according to records from the Texas Education Agency. The same year, 6,391 students withdrew from Fort Worth ISD to go to another Texas school, district records show. Those totals don’t include students who left the district for homeschooling, those who transferred to a private school, those who transferred out of state or high school dropouts.

Of those who live in Fort Worth ISD but go to school elsewhere, about 85% go to charter schools, state records show. More than 4,000 students who live in the district go to one charter network in particular: Uplift Education, which operates 22 campuses across the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

District looks to boost messaging to Fort Worth families

David Saenz, Fort Worth ISD’s chief of strategic initiatives and partnerships, said the district is looking to do a better job of telling its story to Fort Worth families. The district has many things to offer students that charter schools don’t, he said. Its schools offer students a comprehensive experience, including athletics, fine arts and career and technical education, he said. Students can earn college credit while they’re still in high school through AP and dual-credit classes, and students at the district’s early college high schools and collegiate academies can earn an associate’s degree alongside a high school diploma.

Saenz said district leaders are also trying to get a better handle on why families are leaving. At the beginning of the current school year, the district began asking every parent who withdrew their kids from the district the reasons for the decision, he said. So far, the district has seen fewer parents who say they’re moving to charter schools this year than in years past, he said. In many cases, he said, parents say they’re moving into a suburban district for reasons related to housing. When parents say they’re transferring because their kids had a bad experience at school, that information goes to campus principals so they can fix whatever problem led to the transfer, he said.

When enrollments decline, no matter the reason, it leaves the district in a difficult position, Saenz said. When a school is under-enrolled, its course catalog dwindles, he said, because electives and other special programs become more expensive to offer. The district tries to mitigate those challenges by building online courses that students can use for languages in advanced classes, he said, but online options aren’t feasible for other programs like fine arts and athletics. The district tries to avoid cutting those programs, he said, but when lower enrollments make them more expensive, the district has to pull money from somewhere else to make it work.

Middle schooler thriving after transfer to charter school

Makenzie Wiley is one of the thousands of students who transferred from Fort Worth ISD to a charter school last year. Last year, Makenzie went to Hazel Harvey Peace Elementary School in southwest Fort Worth. At the beginning of this school year, she was to move up to Wedgwood Middle School.

But Hazel Harvey Peace was never a good fit for Makenzie, said her grandmother, Lisa Henley. Makenzie, who has dyslexia, struggles with reading, Henley said, and she never got the one-on-one attention she needed at her old school. She was also withdrawn and didn’t speak up in class, Henley said, because she was embarrassed about the fact that she was struggling.

At the beginning of this school year, Henley transferred Makenzie to the Academy of Visual and Performing Arts, a new charter school located in La Gran Plaza de Fort Worth. At first, Henley wasn’t sure she’d made the right decision, she said. Because the school was so new, Makenzie didn’t get the special education services she needed right away. But as the months passed, she made quick progress, Henley said, and she enjoyed exploring the school’s arts offerings. She’s excited to get up and go to school every day, Henley said, and she’s excited about reading, which used to be a chore.

“Now, she wants to learn,” Henley said. “She wants to be able to stand up and show her work.”

The decision to put her granddaughter in a charter school wasn’t a completely new idea, Henley said. Her own kids went to charter schools in Chicago, so she was familiar with how they worked. She thinks it’s a good option for anyone who needs an alternative to their local school district. Families who are happy with the education their kids are getting in traditional schools will always have the option of staying there, she said. But for some students, like Makenzie, neighborhood schools aren’t the best fit, she said.

Fort Worth’s growth mainly falls outside FWISD’s boundaries

One major factor driving the disparity between population growth in Fort Worth and enrollment declines in Fort Worth ISD has to do with where those newcomers are moving. Fort Worth welcomed more new residents than any other city in the state between April 2020 and Jan. 1, 2023, according to the Texas Demographic Center. But that influx of people wasn’t evenly distributed across the city. Many of the new housing developments built over the past five years have been on the northern and southern edges of the city, in areas that fall outside of Fort Worth ISD’s boundaries.

Fort Worth's school districts

Nearly half of Fort Worth's public school students go to Fort Worth ISD, but it's just one of 16 districts that serve parts of the city.

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Steve Wilson swilson@star-telegram.com

Those trends are expected to continue. According to population growth projections from the North Central Texas Council of Governments, Fort Worth can expect its fastest growth over the next two decades in neighborhoods in the far northeast — an area that’s divided among Keller, Eagle Mountain-Saginaw and Northwest ISDs; the east-central part of the city, which falls in Fort Worth ISD; and neighborhoods to the south, which are in Fort Worth and Crowley ISDs. The western part of the city, which falls under Fort Worth, Aledo and White Settlement ISDs, is expected to see relatively little growth.

Even where population grows within Fort Worth ISD’s boundaries, the district won’t necessarily see enrollment gains. Paul Epperley, vice president of the Greater Fort Worth Association of Realtors, said home buyers with school-aged children are primarily looking for homes in neighborhoods in the outlying parts of the city that aren’t part of Fort Worth ISD.

The perceived quality of school districts in the area can be a consideration for families looking to buy homes in a new area, said Epperley, who works as a Realtor across Tarrant County. But home prices represent the main overriding factor influencing their decisions, he said. For most families with school-aged kids, buying a house in Fort Worth’s urban core doesn’t make financial sense, he said. Homes in new housing developments in the outer reaches of the city tend to offer more square footage for a lower price, he said, making them a more obvious fit for families who need space for kids. But although they’re in the Fort Worth city limits, many of those developments are in suburban school districts like Keller and Crowley ISDs.

That isn’t to say that no one is moving into the city’s urban core, Epperley said. But most of the home buyers moving into the central part of the city are empty-nesters — couples who are looking to downsize after their kids have grown up and left home, he said. Those couples generally don’t need as much space as they once did, he said, so the smaller homes in the central part of the city can be a more attractive option.

Enrollment declines play out across Texas, nationwide

The problem of declining enrollment isn’t limited to Fort Worth ISD. Last year, Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath told the Senate Finance Committee that the state is likely to see steady public school enrollment declines over the next decade after 20 years of consistent enrollment growth. The biggest factor driving those enrollment declines is that there are fewer school-aged kids in the state, Morath said. Birth rates in Texas and nationwide declined after the Great Recession, never fully rebounded, and declined further following the pandemic, according to an analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Like Fort Worth, many districts across the country are also struggling with enrollment declines because of students transferring out, said Michael Hansen, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution’s Brown Center on Education Policy. In big, expensive cities like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, many of those transfers were driven by families moving to cheaper cities where parents could work remotely, he said.

Families also left traditional public schools in large numbers for homeschooling at the beginning of the pandemic, Hansen said. While schools were shut down, many parents opted for homeschooling after being forced to take on responsibility for their kids’ education in a way they never had before. Many of those parents have said they liked the flexibility that homeschooling offered, or made the choice because they were unhappy with the instruction they saw their kids getting during remote learning. Although numbers haven’t returned to pre-pandemic norms, Hansen said most of the families that made that change nationwide have gone back to the public school system since then.

But unlike families who switched to homeschooling, students who moved from traditional public schools to charter schools don’t seem to be coming back, Hansen said. That shift isn’t entirely a product of the pandemic — charter schools have steadily gained ground across the country for the past 20 years. But Hansen said that shift accelerated at the beginning of the pandemic, at least in part because many families flocked to charter schools that reopened their campuses before traditional public schools did. For the most part, the families who made that change haven’t come back to their old school districts, he said.

Hansen said there’s no reason to believe the growth of charter schools will abate anytime soon. That isn’t to say charters will eventually supplant traditional public schools — “I don’t believe that this is the new normal and everybody’s going to start going to charter schools,” he said. But across the country, there are more charters opening every year than closing, he said. So school district officials who make plans hoping that those students will return may be disappointed.