Newton’s school-age population has been shrinking for years, according to NPS Data and Research Chief Katy Hogue.

Hogue met with the School Committee on Monday night to go over district census information and noted that the city’s school-aged population has decreased by 1.2 percent since last year.

Whether people are having fewer kids or just not moving to Newton to raise them, Hogue said a major factor in the overall decline in enrollment is the scarcity of kindergarten students entering the system.

“When we gather all this data, the kindergarten cohort each year across all types of schools is declining, and it has been declining every year since 2018 to 2019,” Hogue said. “This year’s kindergarten cohort was 827 students across all types of schools, compared to over 1,000 students in 2018 to 2019.”

This chart shows the years-long decline in Newton’s total school-age population. Source: Newton Public Schools

Local students outside NPS

As of this January, slightly more than 22 percent of the city’s student-aged population is enrolled in schools outside of NPS – a .5 percent increase over the previous January, Hogue continued. That includes private schools, specialty schools and public schools outside of Newton.

A rise in school-aged students living in Newton who don’t attend NPS can be seen across all age groups, Hogue noted.

“At the high school level, that group of students is still the highest percentage of students who are in non-NPS schools, but that percentage has declined from last year by 3.6 percent. At the elementary level, all of the grades saw cohort growth from the prior year.”

To be clear, that refers to growth in cohorts in non-NPS student population. And that tends to trend upward in middle school.

“The largest cohort growth [among middle school grades] was in grade six, so students moving from fifth grade to sixth grade,” she said. “Some of this is attributable to students who leave NPS for private schools. We have a long history of students who leave NPS elementary schools to go to private school in middle school.”

And the ninth grade cohort in non-NPS schools grew by more than 10 percent.

“Prior to COVID, we actually used to see cohort decline for this group of students. So students would come back to NPS in the high schools. We have seen cohort growth in this group of students since COVID happened.”

You can watch Hogue’s presentation online.