South County — Like most communities, Southern Berkshire County is experiencing some unusual and observable phenomena during the COVID-19 pandemic. It goes without saying that some businesses have prospered while others have struggled to adjust and, as The Edge reported Tuesday, Berkshire County’s cultural organizations have been hit with “staggering” losses.
We also know that real estate sales have been brisk, due in no small measure to people who have relocated here from cities such as New York and Boston. What has been lacking so far is sufficient data to support the relocation phenomenon. But recently released enrollment data from the region’s public and private schools, and from the town clerks who handle voter registration, have shed light on the situation.
Among the three South County public school systems The Edge surveyed, enrollments are down from last year as of Oct. 1, when student populations become official and are reported to the state.
At the Southern Berkshire Regional School District, Superintendent Beth Regulbuto reports that her district has 654 students from grades pre-K to 12, down from 683 last year for a drop of 29 students and a decline of approximately 4.5 percent. Regulbuto emphasized that, “The enrollment picture … is a snapshot in time and is continuously fluctuating.”
Of the 69 new students enrolled, 48 of them are pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and early kindergarten students. The remaining 21 students are new move-ins to the district.
In all, 51 students have left the district since the 2019-20 school year. Regulbuto said 11 of those students chose to homeschool because of the pandemic, nine moved out of state completely and the remaining 30 transferred. Of the transferees, 21 went to other public schools, two went to private schools, four to vocational schools and three to “virtual schools.” One other student simply dropped out.
“We anticipate many of the homeschool students returning when the pandemic is over,” Regulbuto added.
SBRSD’s early-K/kindergarten enrollment numbers have increased by seven over last year, and have been steadily doing so since 2015. Pre-K enrollments this year are down by nine students “due to the pandemic and the fact that pre-K is not required,” Regulbuto explained.
In the Lee Public Schools, Superintendent Michael Richard reports that as of Oct. 1, the district had 667 students enrolled, down from 694 last year at this time, or a decrease of slightly more than 4 percent.
The Berkshire Hills Regional School District has also seen a slight decrease in enrollments. Click here to see enrollment data dating back to 2011 and broken down by grades and by the district’s regional elementary, middle and high schools.
At a Nov. 12 meeting, Berkshire Hills Regional School Committee members discussed the student body numbers with Superintendent Peter Dillon. See video below of the meeting. Fast forward to 47:30 to see the discussion on enrollments:
As of Oct. 1, Berkshire Hills had a total of 1,201 students, down from 1,212 last year and 1,357 nine years ago. Of this year’s total, there are 255 students who currently attend Berkshire Hills schools through the state’s public school choice program, up from 236 last year.
There are 73 students who “tuition in” from other towns and districts that contract out to Berkshire Hills, such as Richmond and the Farmington River Regional School District, neither of which has its own high school. The presence of these students creates revenue for school districts — more so for Berkshire Hills, which accepts far more choice students than it sends out.
“Last year we had a particularly large senior class,” said Dillon. “Being down 11 students in a global pandemic is quite remarkable.”
Dillon said some of the students were lost to homeschooling “and other options.” The size of the district’s enrollment is a key driver of state aid and grant funds, so administrators worked hard to attract students from outside the district in order to stave off further losses.
“The principals did a really good job of backfilling seats with choice students and the financial impact of that is quite significant,” Dillon added. “If they had not done that, we might be down 80 students or something and that would have rippled through our budget quite differently.”
Dillon did not say precisely how many students were lost to homeschooling but acknowledged that: “The number is larger this year. We hope, as vaccines are developed and folks see the world and schools as safer, we can get some of those students back to us.”
“We’re obviously doing something right,” said committee member Bill Fields of Great Barrington.
“We are and the principals were really thoughtful about accepting kids in places where we had space and being flexible in what’s been a very challenging year,” replied Dillon.
Conversely, enrollments in the area’s private schools have increased as more families have moved to South County full-time from places like the Boston and New York metropolitan regions.
At Berkshire Country Day School, a pre-K-8 school in Stockbridge, enrollment has risen to 127 students from 112 last year, said director of admissions Melissa Kruse. BCD enrolled 57 new students this year but only 26 last year. Of the 57 new students, 23 of them were members of families that had moved recently to the area from New York.
Berkshire Waldorf High School in Stockbridge reports a substantial increase in its small student body. Last year, BW had 43 full time students and four part-time students. This year, the school has 49 full-time students and five part-time students. BW expects three more students to join the school full-time for the second semester, pushing the full-time number up to 52, said admissions director Sarah Blexrud.
“Some of our new students’ families have come here for reasons related to the pandemic,” Blexrud said in an email. “Many of them have strong connections to the Berkshires. Some parents have grown up here, and are returning to be close to their relatives.”
Blexrud said, in some cases, parents who have moved in from other areas are able to work remotely, so they can support their families while living in the Berkshires.
“Some are longtime part-time residents whose main residence has been a large city — DC or NYC, for example — who have made the move for the relative safety of a rural setting,” Blexrud continued. “We have been able, due to size, the use of additional space, and compliance with protocol, to remain open in person the entire first semester, with zero [COVID] cases.”
Kehr Davis, director of admissions at the Montessori School of the Berkshires in Lenox, reports that her school, which serves children through grade 8, had 130 students last year and is down to 100 this year. But that was not because of a lack of quality applicants. Berkshire Montessori had to limit the size of its student body because COVID -19-related physical distancing protocols restricted the size of its classes. Davis expects enrollments to revert to their former size after the pandemic lifts.
At Berkshire School in Sheffield, admissions director Dana Anselmi told The Edge her school is primarily boarding but does typically take in between 35 and 40 day students each year and began this year with 39.
“We did see an uptick in summer inquiries from families relocating from New York City but we were already fully enrolled so did not have the space to consider many of these late applications,” Anselmi said.
So as public school enrollments have almost uniformly declined in South County, private school enrollments have risen. The evidence indicates that some of the transplants have opted for public schools but many have enrolled their children in private schools. Still others may have opted for virtual learning through their original schools in the Boston or New York areas.
To get an idea of the extent of the migration, The Edge turned to the town clerks, who register new voters. In Great Barrington, by far the largest town in South County, town clerk Jennifer Messina said, at the time of the November 2019 elections, there were 4,508 registered voters. For this November’s elections, there were 5,049, an increase of more than 11 percent.
In Sheffield, town clerk Felecie Joyce said, as of Sept. 1, 2019, there were 2,433 registered voters. Now there are more than 2,500.
“Most of these registrations are new — a few folks who just never registered — but [they’re] primarily new residents in town,” Joyce said.
In Egremont, town clerk Juliette Haas reports that her town currently has 1,102 registered voters. At this time last year, there were about 1,045.
It is unclear how many of the new registrations were from new arrivals and how many were the result of previously unregistered voters who felt compelled to vote in a presidential election of monumental importance.
Countywide, the office of Secretary of State Bill Galvin said, as of Feb. 1, 2019, there were 87,218 registered voters in Berkshire County. As of Oct. 24, 2020, there were 93,714, a rise of some 7.5 percent over 20 months.
The state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education does not typically release statewide or countywide public school enrollments until January. At that time, the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission will likely perform an analysis, BRPC data manager Mark Maloy told The Edge.
There has been plenty of anecdotal evidence of new arrivals in the region: more New York license plates spotted; brisk sales of expensive properties; shortages of goods in packed supermarkets; cars now parked at weekend homes seven days a week.
But while they don’t exactly offer a complete picture, school enrollments and voter registration data don’t lie.
