Despite more homes than ever before being built in the Battle Ground Public Schools district, the number of students in the district is not growing at the same rate, a side effect of post-COVID pandemic recovery.
While worrying, this is not a surprise to administrators. BGPS Superintendent Denny Waters said previous studies indicated the school district student population would grow slowly post-COVID. Student numbers only grew by 147.77 full-time equivalent students in the past year, meeting those projections.
Waters said people might think student enrollment might be a little higher at this point, especially given the new housing in the community, but that isn’t the case. When it does happen, officials anticipate growth first taking place at the primary schools.
“Then, as those students get older, we’re going to see it at the middle schools, and as those students get older, we’re going to see it at the high schools,” Waters said.
Waters believes, however, that despite the low growth numbers, BGPS and the Ridgefield School District are only a few in the region that are showing any enrollment increases, at all.
“We continue to cross our fingers that enrollment goes up,” Waters said. “Enrollment is critical to any school district because enrollment is funding. That’s what drives the budget.”
In 2016-17, BGPS had a full-time equivalent total of 13,115.64 students across the board for K-12. For the 2024-25 school year, the district’s full-time equivalent K-12 total stands at 12,168.12, a decrease of 947.52 students.
Deputy Superintendent Shelly Whitten said the enrollment trend is a reflection of the continually evolving housing market, especially when looking at the student totals from when Daybreak Primary and Middle School in Battle Ground first opened in 2007 compared with this school year.
“[Near Daybreak] a lot of the families stayed in their houses … And then we had [the] ’07-’08 happen in a recession, and people just said, ‘I’m going to hang on to this thing,’ but as they hung on to it, their students began to age out, and so then we had a drop in enrollment,” Whitten said. “So Daybreak, when it opened, had a couple hundred students more than it has today, currently, and so I think some of that is happening countywide.”
For the 2024-25 school year, Daybreak Primary School has 513.18 full-time equivalent students, up from 485.78 the previous year. Daybreak Middle School has 490 full-time equivalent students, compared with 486.17 the previous year.
School choice is also impacting student numbers throughout the Battle Ground district, particularly the growing number of students opting to attend the alternative schools that the district offers. This year, a full-time equivalent total of 10,145.56 students is attending the regular slate of schools, while 2,022.56 are in alternative schools. Last school year, 10,161.20 full-time equivalent students enrolled in regular schools, while 1,859.15 enrolled in the alternative options.
The Battle Ground Virtual Academy saw exponential growth with a total of 276.46 full-time equivalent students opting to attend the program last school year. This year, a full-time equivalent total of 401.13 is enrolled in the virtual schooling program the district offers. Also, 844.32 students are enrolled in the River Homelink alternative school, while last year a total of 853.74 enrolled, a slight sign of the dip in class sizes the district is experiencing across the board.
At the high school level, full-time equivalent enrollment at Battle Ground and Prairie high schools combined totalled out at 3,091.23 last school year. This year, the total enrollment slightly decreased, landing at 3,034.94. Battle Ground High School grew by roughly seven full-time equivalent students with Prairie High School dropping 62.54 in total.
The stagnancy of student numbers does not reflect what is taking place in the community. In Battle Ground alone, multiple housing developments are currently under construction or are recently complete.
“That’s the conundrum, right? Because we see it too, and we think, ‘Wow, that’s going to be a lot of kids,’ ” Waters said. “And yet in some cases, it’s helping us regain our enrollment, but it’s not like 15 years ago, when we saw these houses be built and the kids would have come with them, and they’re not.”
Whitten said she thinks the enrollment trends are also being affected by different factors, including the economy.
“I think it’s also a societal trend that’s based a lot on economics,” she said. “People are waiting longer to have kids, and a lot of that is economic factors because we can’t afford to even get into a home.”
In 20 years time, the median home price in Battle Ground rose from $185,000 in 2004 to $547,500 in 2024, according to the Regional Multiple Listing Service. In 2014, the median home price landed at $235,000. In the last 10 years, the median price rose $312,500.
Presently, Clark County’s cost of living is the fourth highest in Washington state, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Map. A family of four, classified with two parents and two children, needs to budget $9,403 per month, or $112,840 per year.
With the additional housing, enrollment totals at the primary level may be starting to trend upward on a case-by-case basis, depending on the grade level and the school’s location, Waters said, and Whitten agreed.
“So, I do think it’s coming back,” Whitten said of enrollment. “There’s a second wave of people moving into those homes.”
