The standard, brick and mortar government education model continues to decline in Fairbanks, where the school district is reporting the loss of another 589 students this year.
According to a new enrollment report, which will be shared with the school board at its Nov. 4 meeting, the district has dropped from 11,971 students last year to 11,382 this year – a 5% decrease. That’s based off of a 20-day enrollment count average in October.
The report shows that 15.1% of the enrollment losses are due to students who have left the Fairbanks school system in favor of a homeschool program that is operated outside of the district. Another 1.5% of the student losses came from students who transferred to a private school.
In total, the district saw 382 students depart for an outside correspondence program with just 217 entering from another correspondence program. That is a net loss of 165 students over the past year.
The homeschool surge has been driven, in part, by an increasingly leftist school board, which has pushed radical DEI, critical race, explicit sex education and LGBTQ-themed curriculum in recent years. This has divided the education community and created considerable outcry during public meetings with many parents threatening to pull their kids from the district.
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Aside from losing students to home and private education, the district is also dealing with an overall population decline across the borough. From 2015 to 2024, the population has dropped about 1% but the percentage of older people has increased, while there are fewer school-age residents.
“Current kindergarten enrollment reflects birth rates from approximately five years prior,” the enrollment report states. “We are likely experiencing the impact of a 9% decline in birth rates in 2019 that has not reversed.”
Since 2005-2006, the district’s enrollment has fallen by about 23%, the report notes, with the majority of the decline due to population shifts.
