Farm crisis of 1980s called main culprit in driving future parents out of North Dakota
By Ryan Bakken / Grand Forks Herald Staff Writer
McVILLE, N.D. -- In 2001, Dakota Prairie High School will graduate 55 seniors. That fall, seven kindergartners will begin school.
Replacing 55 students with seven is a dramatic example of what's about to happen in North Dakota schools. Enrollments have been falling in a trickle for many years. But the drops in the near future won't be coming in drizzles, but rather in downpours as big classes are replaced by small classes.
At Dakota Prairie, a 1993 consolidation of schools from McVille, Aneta, Michigan, Tolna and Petersburg, the K-12 enrollment is projected to drop by about 100 students -- to 327 -- in five years. School districts with similar 20 percent declines over that time period aren't uncommon.
Projections based on census figures show that the statewide enrollment in the 2004-05 school year will be down 12.4 percent from what it is today. Most smaller districts will have a more pronounced reduction as the population continues to move to the bigger cities.
Area school districts with at least a 20 percent enrollment decline over the next five years are: Adams, Bisbee-Egeland, Cavalier, Drayton, Edinburg, Edmore, Fordville, Fort Totten, Grafton, Lakota, Langdon, Larimore, Northwood, Park River, Rugby, Starkweather and Thompson.
"For most of these schools, these are best-case-scenario numbers," said Tom Decker, director of school finance and organization for the State Department of Public Instruction that did the projects.
"That's because they're based only on births, not on trends of in-migration and out-migration. And most of these districts have a trend of out-migration."
The cost
Dakota Prairie's 48-student drop in one year will mean a loss of more than $100,000 in state foundation aid payments, figured at roughly $2,200 per student. In five years, the loss will be more than $200,000 annually if current funding levels are maintained. Serious measures will be needed.
"People are going to have to realize that there is going to be additional facility closure," said Dakota Prairie Superintendent Ed Poehls. "We fiscally won't be able to keep all (three schools currently in use)."
For many small schools, consolidation such as Dakota Prairie went through seven years ago seems inevitable.
"The bottom line of it is, if things don't change, the bullet will have to be bitten and you'll find a lot of our smaller schools going by the wayside," Poehls said. "And, if a town loses its school, that's a tough sell no matter what your problems are."
The reaction
Schools in northeastern North Dakota and across the state are reacting to the enrollment declines. Milton-Osnabrock and Langdon are talking about reorganization. So are Adams and Edmore. There has been no vocal opposition to either consolidation, which would happen in the fall of 2001.
Cando, Bisbee-Egeland, Rock Lake and Border Central are talking about whether they, too, want to consider reorganization.
In all cases, the culprit is declining enrollments that would mean higher taxes and/or fewer curriculum offerings if nothing is done. The same thing is happening all over the state.
"There will be more consolidations over the next two years than we had in the last 10 years combined," Decker said.
North Dakota has 229 school districts, with 186 high schools. Sixty-four districts have K-12 enrollments of less than 100. And more than half of the high schools (103) have grades 9-12 enrollments of less than 100.
The enrollment numbers are projected to grow steadily worse because of the small number of children ages 6 and under.
The cause
The public perception is that the current farm crisis is the main reason for the school enrollment drop.
The lagging rural economy certainly contributes, but the main cause is the farm crisis of the 1980s. That crisis, in combination with the oil bust, sent young adults packing.
In the 1980s, North Dakota had a net export of 50,000 people ages 20 to 35, which are considered the child-bearing years. In that time, more than half of North Dakota's counties exported more than half of their residents in that age group.
These people not only left but they took their future children with them.
"Those are the individuals who have kids," Decker said. "They would have been the parents of significant numbers of school students in the late 1990s and early 2000s. They mostly left rural North Dakota, the places that could least afford it."
Out-migration is not the only reason, however. Rapidly falling fertility rates also contribute. Fargo is the prime example of that.
Cass County's population has grown at an annual rate of 2 percent for the past 20 years. Fargo is at the heart of that population boom, with a big chunk of the growth being young adults. Yet Fargo's school enrollment has dropped by about 100 students this year, with no major growth anticipated.
"Fargo has a large concentration of young adults, but they're very mobile -- attending colleges, starting new careers," said Richard Rathge, director of the North Dakota Data Center. "They're delaying marriage and delaying having that first child. Despite the population growth, the number of births in Cass County has fallen every year since 1996."
Fargo's situation shows how widespread the school enrollment problem is and how outmigration isn't the only reason for it.
"Fargo's enrollment was the single thing that's happened in the last five or six years that really drove the point home," Decker said. "Almost every community keeps believing that there's a miracle out there somewhere. They always pointed to some place that was growing like crazy."
Miracle evaporates
Thompson, 10 miles south of Grand Forks, was one of those places. As a bedroom community, it attracted working class families with children. So enrollment grew steadily for 10 years until the late 1990s.
But the enrollment has dropped since, with projections of a decline of 131 students -- 25 percent -- by 2005.
Since Thompson doesn't have abandoned homes and farmsteads, the shortage of incoming students is largely a reflection of birth rates. North Dakota had about 8,000 births last year, about one-half the number in 1982.
In addition to fewer adults of child-bearing ages, families are having fewer children. Decker cites Napoleon as a North Dakota town that historically had large families. Napoleon had more than 800 students in 1970, but has 267 now and could have 100 fewer in 10 years, he said.
"We have a structural problem that will affect us for a long period of time," Decker said. "Not having people of child-bearing years isn't something you can change in a hurry. The only way is to get jobs that will result in a heavy immigration of people with children.":
