Enrollment down, achievement up at Asheville City Schools

It was a good news/bad news kind of meeting for the Asheville City Board of Education on Sept. 16.

According to a presentation from Asheville City Schools (ACS) Superintendent Maggie Fehrman, district enrollment continues to decline, though at a slower pace than recent years. Meanwhile, overall achievement for ACS students increased by 2.5% in 2023-24, according to data released Sept. 4 by the N.C. Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI).

Fehrman reported that the well-documented achievement gap between Black and white students closed slightly last year. Achievement for Black students increased by 3.5%, outpacing their white peers, whose scores grew by 2%, she said.

“That is another step in the right direction. We know we still have a lot of work to do but want to highlight those successes because we’ve got to take time to recognize some of the great work happening, to keep motivating our staff to lean in and do this hard work,” Fehrman told the board.

Achievement is measured by the percentage of students meeting a proficiency level of at least 3 out of 5 on end-of-course and end-of-grade exams.

Despite the improvement, just 17% of Black students in ACS are considered proficient, compared with 76% of their white peers. Overall, 58% of the district’s students meet the proficiency standard, according to NCDPI. According to ACS, 17% of the district’s students are Black.

ACS has faced criticism over its achievement gap between Black and white students for years and earned a worst-in-the-state designation in 2017. A 2019 report from the Stanford Center for Education Policy Analysis noted the district had the fifth-largest gap in the country, according to Carolina Public Press, which appears to be the most recent analysis of achievement gap data.

Fehrman reiterated an ambitious goal for closing the achievement gap.

“As we look at our work plan for this year, our goal is that every school has its students meeting or exceeding growth on our standardized measures and that we are going to bring those achievement rates up for our Black students to 50% or more,” she said.

During public comment, ACS employee Christopher Gordon commended the growth the district achieved for Black students last year but added that it was not enough.

“The challenge now is to increase and sustain the growth, because too many of our kids continue to have difficulty with these assessments. To focus on growth masks the fact that our Black students continue to underperform at all levels across all indicators,” said Gordon, who is also a member of the Community Reparations Commission.

“While I applaud our superintendent’s focus on the issue and the goal of 50% proficiency, I wonder if the presented solutions can achieve the desired result. It seems to me that a comprehensive and targeted approach needs to be implemented districtwide so that all students can reach their potential,” he added.

Much of the growth in grades three through eight can be attributed to gains in math. The district as a whole improved its scores in math in elementary and middle school by almost 6%, buoyed by large gains at Hall Fletcher Elementary, Lucy S. Herring Elementary and Asheville Middle School, according to the data. In reading, the district saw a more modest increase of about 2% across the same grades.

The state only tests science in fifth and eighth grades, and students’ scores increased by 8.4% in those grades last year.

Numbers for high school students aren’t as positive. Across all subjects, proficiency numbers decreased by 2.2% at Asheville High School and School of Inquiry and Life Sciences at Asheville (SILSA), with the largest decreases coming in English (3.8%) and math 1 (3.5%). However, the gap between Black and white high school students did close slightly, as achievement for Black students increased from 11% to 14%, according to NCDPI.

As far as enrollment goes, Fehrman reported that ACS enrolled 56 fewer students this year — 3,840 total — than in 2023-24, according to numbers reported 10 days into the school year. Fehrman attributed at least part of the losses to the shrinking nationwide birth rate.

Much of the decrease is at the middle school level where ACS has lost more than 100 students over the last four years. One of the district’s two middle schools, Montford North Star Academy, was closed in May, leaving only Asheville Middle School to serve that population.

Between July 1 and Sept. 3, 70 students withdrew and 13 students enrolled in AMS, putting the middle school with 34 fewer students than projected earlier this summer. Overall, the district had 606 students withdraw and 650 enroll over that period, Fehrman said.

Most of the withdrawals went to charter (93) or private (55) schools. Another 76 transferred to Buncombe County Schools. The remaining 382 left the area or chose to be homeschooled.

Public school districts closely follow enrollment numbers, as state and federal funding is directly tied to how many students attend district schools.

Asheville joins Buncombe to oppose private school vouchers

In a 7-0 vote, the Asheville school board passed a resolution asking the state to put a moratorium on its private school voucher program until public schools are adequately funded.

The move follows a similar resolution passed by the Buncombe County Board of Education and the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners in recent months as bills in the N.C. General Assembly propose allocating more funding to the program. A law last year removed income caps from the program, allowing parents who are already sending their child to a private school to apply for funding.

“Diverting taxpayer funds towards unaccountable, taxpayer-funded private school vouchers undermines the integrity and effectiveness of North Carolina’s public education system,” board member James Carter read from the resolution.

The Office of State Budget and Management estimates that Buncombe County’s two public school districts could be out a combined $5.6 million in fiscal year 2027 due to vouchers, and that was before the program was expanded.