The first two installments in this Empty Desks series focused on the City of Boston, with one analyzing The Enrollment Crisis in Boston Public Schools and the other detailing The Growing Mismatch Between City and School Demographics in Boston. This third and final research brief zooms out to see whether the enrollment patterns we saw in Boston are playing out similarly across Inner Core Communities (as defined by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council).

Based on our read of the recent data, the results are somewhat mixed. Whereas Boston’s school-aged population has declined over the past decade, school-aged populations are up slightly regionwide since 2014 (+6.5 percent if excluding Boston and +0.6 if including Boston).¹ And there’s significant variation by type of community. At the same time, K-2 enrollment is down considerably across most of the inner core, suggesting enrollment declines in the coming years.

A confluence of factors from declining birthrates to rising housing costs to shifting immigration patterns contribute to these trends. So, let’s start this analysis by looking first at the current relationship between typical incomes in each city or town with its school-aged population. What we find is a rough U-shaped pattern, where both lower- and higher-income communities tend to have higher school-aged population shares and more middle-income communities tend to have lower.

We suspect that the issues the whole region is wrestling with—like declining birthrates, rising housing costs, and shifting immigration patterns—affect these communities in different ways. In lower-income municipalities like Revere and Lynn, growth appears to be fueled by increasing immigrant populations and moderate-income families seeking more affordable housing. In contrast, higher-income towns such as Newton and Brookline are seeing an influx of wealthier families, perhaps as part of a process of social and economic sorting.

Now, let’s look at how school-attending populations in these communities have changed leading up to this point. Excluding Boston, this cluster grew by about 6.5 percent on average. Most of this growth came immediately after 2014, however, with population levels stabilizing over the latter half of the decade and into the 2020s.

Interestingly, when including Boston, school-attending child populations are little changed from 2014 (up just 0.6 percent).

What’s concerning, however, is that K-2 enrollment has declined significantly across most inner core communities, following a more uniform trend. Since early elementary enrollment is often predictive of future enrollment, these declines suggest that overall enrollment in these districts may also shrink more uniformly in the coming years.

It’s important to note that the data used throughout this report focuses on residents who are already school-aged. However, for under-5 populations—which DESE does not track—estimates from the American Community Survey also point to potential future declines. By comparing pooled data from 2013- 2017 to 2018-2022, we see that the number of 0- to 4-year-olds has dropped across most inner core communities, reinforcing concerns that future school enrollment may continue to decline.

Throughout this piece we’ve focused on recent changes, but our final graph takes a longer view, examining how the share of each community’s school-aged population has changed since 1990. And what we see is that half of the region’s inner core communities experienced some growth, with Belmont seeing the largest increase—up 5.4 percentage points. In contrast, Boston lost the greatest share of school attending children, down 4.4 percentage points from 1990.