Background Information
Full report from Maryland Planning Department.
The report tables are here. The 2021 version of this document is here.
Historical Enrollment Data
“Maryland’s 2021 public school enrollment of 853,307 is its lowest since 2015. Since 2000”
– Public School Enrollment Projections 2022 -2031
Projections
2022 Projections
2021 Projections
Historical and Projections Charted 2022
2022 vs. 2021 Total Projections
2022 Total Enrollment Projections
2021 Total Enrollment Projections
Total Enrollment Projections Differences
To keep it simple, we’re just going to look at the Projected 2030 numbers and peak year.
For 2022, the projected total is 868,860 which is about 4% less than the 2021 projected total enrollment of 903,520.
That is just the adjustment from 2021 and does not include the projection from 2020 or 2019 which I’ve yet to find but would likely be way higher.
This difference is also enough that it makes the peak school enrollment over the entire period examined to be 2019 (obviously before 2020) instead of 2030… our Maryland state public school system looks like it will start the next decade still not even caught back up to 2019.
Analysis of Projections
The most obvious thing is that in 2021 a massive gain was projected of 17,131 students and instead ended up losing 5,212 more.
This would have likely been the largest ever increase in history after the largest decrease in history in 2020 due to the pandemic. In fact, the report projected that about over 93% of the 18,291 annual enrollment loss would come back in 2021.
The 2022 projections seem to have learned from this and expecting a slow but stead enrollment increase until 2025-26 where presumably there is a large graduating class.
The big question is after 2 years suffering losses can the Maryland Public school system get back in the net positive this year?
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MCPS Enrollment Projections vs. Other Counties
For simplicity sake, I have removed the small Eastern shore counties from the chart.
2022 – County Enrollment Projections
2021 – County Enrollment Projections
MCPS Drops Substantially
MCPS went from 7.3% 10 year increase to just .7% 10 year increase from 2021 to 2022. This represents that MCPS is one of the jurisdictions hit hardest by enrollment decreases.
In fact, MCPS went from the 5th largest projected % increase to the 18th largest projected % increase in the State of Maryland for counties.
MCPS has the 4th largest negative difference from 2022 to 2021 dropping by the 6.6% net (subtract 7.3% from .7%).
Other Areas
Shockingly, Baltimore City is projected to lose over 5,500 more students over the next 10 years for a -7.5% loss of projected enrollment.
Howard County has the largest drop off from 2021 to 2022 for a net change of -9.1%.
Although Howard County still is projected to increase enrollment by 4% over the next 10 years, that is a large drop off from the 13.1% projected enrollment increase from 2021.
More in the Report
There is a lot more in the report about changing demographics and all sorts of interesting charts showing different school levels and full county data. We may look at this more in the future but couldn’t include everything here.
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