Marblehead High School Enrollment 2006 - 2022

The fluctuation of enrollments in public schools provides a number of challenges as it it relates to staffing. In addition communities must address the costs of operating the schools as they represent a large percentage of the communities overall budget. These are huge challenges as the states often put mandates in place with no funding. The demands on the teachers have increased in terms of their responsibilities that go far outside their teaching requirements. The stresses that were placed on teachers during the Covid pandemic pushed many teachers to their limits. Certainly very trying and frustrating times.

As the housing market continues to create almost impossible choices for many young people to consider buying a home, it is our belief many communities are going to see major drops in enrollment in the years ahead. Families will need to find communities where housing is more within their budgets.

Marblehead, MA is a seaport community that has become a very popular place to live. The trouble is the average price per home has sky rocketed to almost seem ridiculous. Homes which in recent years would be fortunate to be at the $750,000 level are now selling well over a million dollars. These homes are on the market only but a few days or weeks. Shocking some times to see the selling price over $1.5 million.

To qualify for purchasing and operating these homes translates to an income that is far beyond many young families today. Bottom line in the years ahead we can only see the enrollment in the schools to drop at a consistent level.

The twist to all of this many families have decided to pull their kids out of the Marblehead School system by enrolling their kids in private schools. In these cases money is not the issue. Locally there are a number of options for both boys and girls.

The above graph is the Marblehead High School enrollment from 2006 - 2022. The average was 994, with the peak of 1,066 in 2015 and low of 879 in 2022. A red flag went up with the consistent drop over the past three years. This represents a 18% drop in enrollment since 2015. If a business was experiencing these types of results it would certainly would have to modify it’s business plan and strategy to get back on track. We realize many do not want to compare a school to a business, but we’re sorry to say a school is a business. If you ask many people why they move to a community the quality of the school system is one of the biggest determining factors. We’re not saying the quality of the Marblehead Schools has dropped, but we’re saying it would be worth while to look into why parents have decided to pull their kids from the school and attend private schools. Key question is what could the school do differently?