Enrollment At Nantucket Public Schools Drops 3 Percent

Nantucket Public School enrollment is down 54 students from last year's record high, according to a report given by Superintendent Elizabeth Hallett at Tuesday's School Committee meeting.

This represents a roughly 3 percent decline for NPS's student population, due in part to a small incoming kindergarten class and the end of the so-called “bubble” of larger-than-usual classes that led to the construction of the new intermediate school in 2017.

“We will keep a careful eye on enrollment over the course of the year and report changes that we see each month as usual,” Hallett said.

The total enrollment at NPS this September is 1,670, down from 1,724 last June and 1,731 last September.

NPS enrollment most recently declined in the 2023-24 school year, although the decline of 35 students was less than the 54-student decline from last year to this year.

Hallett said that enrollment has begun to even out in the district, despite last year’s record total.

“We’re evening out,” she said. “We don’t see as many large, large classes.”

With the most recent data, NPS enrollment is now essentially flat since the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, enrollment was 1,672. In 2020, it was 1,666. After expanding by nearly 36% throughout the 2010s, NPS enrollment has remained somewhat static, expanding three times and contracting three times since 2019.

Hallett also emphasized that enrollment will continue to fluctuate, and there are no obvious, predictable trends that can be easily extrapolated to next year or the year after.

“We have seen small classes come, we have seen large classes come in,” Hallett said. “We do look at births on the island each year…and we do have a bumper crop, so we may be seeing an increase in enrollment.”

The exact number of enrolled students may change throughout the year, and Hallett said that October's enrollment data is used as a benchmark, meaning that comparisons to previous enrollment data are not exact.

“We’re going to see over the course of the next several weeks,” she said. “It’s hard to tell. This is the very first enrollment that we have. Things will be a little more settled in our October enrollment.”

However, any fluctuations are likely to be relatively small and not account for the full 54-student difference.

The news comes on the first day of the new school year, with students returning to class for the first time since June.