Where are all the kids? Family choices result in fewer children in local public schools

Bethany Thramer always wanted a family. 

But with a job at a nonprofit that she was passionate about, she and her husband always worried how they would afford child care while Thramer continued her career.

So they made the move with their two young sons from Portland to the Eugene area in 2019, where they could rely heavily on grandparent support. They had their third son, Bertram, in 2020.

Bertram, 5, just entered kindergarten at Springfield’s Mt. Vernon Elementary. He’s in one of the smallest classes of kindergarteners districts have seen in a long time. And the class isn’t an outlier; kindergarten classes have been shrinking in Springfield since 2019.

As young families like Thramer’s are faced with the rising costs of child care, housing and other necessities, fewer people are choosing to have children in Eugene and Springfield, and those who do are sometimes priced out.

Economic factors, combined with a small but growing group of families turning to alternative education, are leading to enrollment declines for local districts. And this creates a funding conundrum for the districts, as they rely on per-pupil funding from the state. With fewer dollars in their budgets, schools are forced to eliminate staff, services and even schools.

Economic pressures

This year’s kindergarten cohort in Springfield Public Schools was projected to be the smallest it has seen since full-day kindergarten started 10 years ago. Bethel School District and Eugene School District 4J have their second-smallest kindergarten cohorts on record, according to current numbers, barely bigger than last year’s cohort.

When Springfield Public Schools administrators make enrollment projections, they look at a range of data, including birth rates from five years prior. This helps them predict how many incoming kindergarteners to expect, said Brett Yancey, the district’s chief operations officer. And what they’ve seen is a downward trend.

Birth rates are dropping locally, reflecting the same trend nationwide. United States census data projects that by 2040, deaths will outnumber births in the U.S., with the only net gain in population coming from international migration. In Oregon, deaths have already overtaken births. The state had the fifth-lowest birth rate in 2023, at nine births per 1,000 residents.

There are complex reasons for the tumbling birth rate, according to demographer Ethan Sharygin, director of the Population Research Center at Portland State University.

Sharygin said while the birth rate has been declining for decades due to factors including modern medicine improving child mortality rates, urban migration and increased contraception use, there have been slight upswings — the last one being in the late 2000s, when the housing market was strong and there were high rates of immigration.

The Great Recession was the beginning of the latest, ongoing decline. Even though immigration rates rose again in the early 2020s, the birth rate did not, because the birth rate is also declining in countries where immigrants were coming from.

Women are also now more educated and economically empowered, Sharygin said, which means they have more choices about when they have children, with whom and how many. They are deciding to have children later in life and for some, deciding to have smaller families to accommodate the lifestyle they want.

Sharygin said he sees the decline continuing for at least the next 10 to 15 years. 

That means school districts are, and will be, competing with each other for a smaller pool of young families.

“For school districts, migration is a more important source of replacement students for declining enrollment than is birth rates, which are falling almost everywhere,” Sharygin said in an email. “Migration is much more dependent on economic conditions, and especially housing prices.”

Even in Springfield, a city with more land to build on than its neighbor, Eugene, affordability of new homes is not guaranteed, Yancey said. He feels strongly that it’s necessary, however.

“To have a robust education system, you need two things,” Yancey said. “You need sustainable jobs, and you need affordable housing.”

Bethel Superintendent Kraig Sproles is also concerned about affordability and job availability in his district.

Like the other two districts, Bethel experienced a large drop in enrollment during the first year of the pandemic. And the district’s enrollment numbers never fully recovered. He thinks that because young families tend to be more affected by economic change, Bethel lost families who moved to places where it was less costly. Others may have chosen alternative education options. Some have come back, but it’s now a “slow dribble,” Sproles said.

“We’re just kind of assuming the students that left are gone,” he said. “They are either homeschooled, or they are in an established program, or they’ve moved.”

Sproles said the urban growth boundary, which limits how land can be developed past a certain geographic line, makes it hard for the Bethel area to add new families. Only the city of Eugene has the power to change the boundary, and while officials are considering moving it to expand housing development, it will be a years-long planning process.

Drawing young families isn’t just a local issue; it’s a state issue. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, enrollment in public Oregon K-12 schools decreased by 2% from 2012-2022, and it’s projected to drop by 11% from 2022 to 2031. Meanwhile, Oregon’s eastern neighbor Idaho is projected to gain 11% in enrollment in the same period of time. Montana and Utah are also expected to see small gains.

Choosing other education pathways

Chris Tee’s daughter, Adia, started kindergarten at Eugene’s Willagillespie Elementary School in 2020, the same year Thramer’s oldest son started kindergarten.

Both families experienced the roller-coaster of having young children during the early days of the pandemic, but Tee and Thramer, both public education enthusiasts, decided to keep their kids in Eugene and Springfield schools, even as parent friends turned to alternative options, like homeschooling and private schools.

This year, however, the mothers have chosen different routes. 

As Bertram attends his first year of kindergarten at Mt. Vernon Elementary with his two older brothers, Adia is starting fifth grade at Eugene Christian School.

Adia’s grade started school partially online due to the pandemic, which led to learning gaps, Tee said. Adia’s classmates also had disruptive behavioral problems, from Tee’s observation. Tee saw it stemming from a combination of pandemic-induced issues: lack of stability at home for certain students, increased tech use and decreased adult supervision and relationships.

“The problem is multifaceted and systemic,” Tee said.

When she would volunteer in her daughter’s fourth-grade classroom at Willagillespie last year, she noticed that other children’s behavior problems were interfering with her daughter’s ability to learn. Tee said the teacher wasn’t adequately challenging her daughter, who tested into the talented and gifted category, and that led to her decision to seek schooling elsewhere.

Kelly McIver, 4J spokesperson, said that the district has opportunities for students to transfer to other schools if they are not getting their needs met at their neighborhood school. He also acknowledged that post-pandemic behavioral issues have posed challenges for schools. 

“While some families may choose other educational paths — which is their right — we remain focused on strengthening our own system,” McIver said in a statement. “We acknowledge the challenges of recent years, and we are focused on building back stronger in both attendance and achievement so every student has the opportunity to succeed. We are committed to partnering with families and providing options that support every student’s success.”

Because districts don’t track students after they leave a district, it’s hard to say where students go when they do leave. Yancey, of Springfield Public Schools, said the district is only clued in to where students go when the district receives a transcript request.

Lane County private school enrollment is not growing, according to data from a private school national survey by the National Center for Education Statistics. It’s actually shrinking, mirroring the public school enrollment trend.

But data shows a small but rising number of parents are choosing homeschooling and public online charter schools. In Lane County, the number of homeschooled students doubled in the past 10 years. And Baker Web Academy, one of the state’s top virtual public charter schools, has seen statewide enrollment more than double in the past eight years. Baker Web serves 495 students in the Lane County area, according to Jodi Coleman, Baker Web principal of the Eugene region.

A future of shrinking districts

Clear Lake Elementary School’s closing party in June was a community affair. The pettable party animal Caesar the No Drama Llama attended, kids stood in line for face painting and a balloon artist and former students flipped through yearbooks dating back to the 1980s.

The elementary school closed at the end of the 2024-25 school year due to the district’s drop in enrollment. And it may be the first of many future school closings. Sproles said at a recent school board meeting that community support of Clear Lake’s closing has become a model for other school districts, near and far, looking to close schools.

The district will save about $1.8 million by not operating Clear Lake this year, and will save more over time. But closing schools isn’t the cure-all, Sproles said.

He is serious about long-range planning, because of enrollment’s effect on budgeting. In the past 10 years, the district has lost almost 700 students. 

Bethel’s enrollment for the 2025-2026 school year was 4,944 students, as of Sept. 5. After studying population data, Sproles said he and other district staff predict that enrollment may eventually drop to around 3,500 in Bethel before stabilizing at around 4,000.

Every 500 students lost equals about a $7 million loss of state funds, Sproles estimates. This will mean inevitable cuts to staff and services that districts are already making.

This year, the Springfield district cut 38 full-time equivalent positions, and 4J cut the same amount. Bethel cut 40. Other cuts have already meant limited or no money for school supplies, arts programming, playground maintenance and infrastructure updates. Because all three districts dipped into reserve money to maintain staffing levels this year, more severe cuts to staff are expected in years to come.

Parenting in 2025

It was bittersweet for Thramer to drop Bertram off at kindergarten the first week of September.

As her children scampered off to school with hugs and kisses and “I love yous,” she balanced the sadness of the baby days being over with the relief of being able to fully concentrate on her job once again. Her divided attention, ever tilting between work and family, has been one of toughest parts of having kids.

Meanwhile, Tee is happy with Adia’s experience at Eugene Christian School so far. 

Adia will miss Battle of the Books at Willagillespie, but Tee said her new teacher is committed to pushing Adia academically. Meanwhile, her older brother will remain at Monroe Middle School because he doesn’t want to leave the jazz band or his friends. Tee values her son’s positive experience at Monroe and also appreciates her daughter’s new principal’s approach to discipline.

“Leadership trickles down and impacts the whole school community,” Tee said in an email. “He values his staff and provides accountability.”

Thramer has been in schools as a PTA volunteer, and she understands parents who choose other education options for their kids. The increase in behavioral issues is real, she said, and she wants her children to be academically challenged. But Thramer also sees the value in the soft skills her kids are learning.

“Learning how to interact with other people, I think, is a lost art for too many people,” Thramer said. “Sometimes they’re in uncomfortable situations, and sometimes it’s things they don’t want to do. For my kids, I think that’s really good character development.”

While parents make difficult decisions about their childrens’ futures, school administrators like Sproles lay awake at night, running numbers in their heads, thinking about their districts’ futures.

As class sizes shrink, Sproles said, “Our big question is, ‘Where’s the bottom?’”