KANSAS CITY, Mo. — There's a common bond between school administrators working in the public school system in Kansas City, Missouri and the city's charter schools: a puzzling drop in student enrollment.
At Citizens of the World Charter Schools, enrollment for the 2021-22 school year is down 35 percent.
"So many families are enduring so many challenges right now," Christle Reed, communications director for Citizens of the World Charter Schools, said Tuesday. "By this time, we would have seen a lot more kids enrolled and we're just not seeing that right now."
On Wednesday, the school is hosting an in-person kindergarten enrollment fair from 4 to 7 p.m. in an effort to reach families.
"We want to make sure we are not another hard decision," Reed said. "Parents have a lot of hard decisions to make right now and we don't want school to be that, so whatever they need to know, whatever they need to feel comfortable - they can get that from us."
Roughly 50 percent of the city's students attend charter schools, while the other half attend Kansas City Public Schools.
Show Me KC Schools, a group that compiles data for all students, says the enrollment decline is noticable across the board.
Leslie Kohlmeyer is the director of School App KC for Show Me KC Schools. She estimates the city's Pre-K through 12th grade system is missing 1,000 kids.
"Very alarming," Kohlmeyer said of the decline.
Kohlmeyer says the enrollment decline is concentrated among students attending kindergarten through eighth grade.
The decline is particularly troublesome among kindergartners, where roughly 400 students - 300 from KCPS and 100 from charter schools - have not enrolled.
Kohlmeyer said she thought she'd see a bounce-back from the current, COVID-19-impacted school year, but it hasn't happened.
She guesses parents could've decided to hold back their children another year, still fear the pandemic, had to move away, have gotten used to homeschooling, or have yet to complete the enrollment process.
Kohlmeyer noticed another alarming trend: more 7 year-olds are enrolling in kindergarten because this is the first time they've gone to a school.
Show Me KC Schools projects this data will be reflected next year as well.
Kohlmeyer said it's a trend across the country, with some cities reporting a 50% decline in enrollment.
"Kansas City is down about 20 percent overall, so we're treading water, but we'd still like to see people trust the system and put their kids back in school because schools are falling over themselves to put in place social distancing and hand washing stations," Kohlmeyer said. "We're really trying hard to make it a safe space for families and kids."
These institutions fear the enrollment decline might affect not just student development, but for the schools' ability to stay open.
"We want to make sure we keep the school doors open and keep the same programs available to our students every year," Reed said.
Kohlmeyer said this might mean closing down schools.
"If we don't have enrollment, we won't have the need for extra buildings," she said.
Enrollment for the 2021-2022 school year is still open.
Parents can use the SchoolAppKC to look at different schools and send in one application that will be distributed to each of the schools they are interested in.
Parents can also go to Enroll KC to find a list of every school in Kansas City and links to apply.
The Kansas State Department of Education reports an 8.5% decrease in kindergarten students enrolled in public school for the 2020-2021 school year. They report a 3% decrease in enrollment overall from Pre-K through 12th grade.
Missouri's department of education did not respond to 41 Action News information request.
