A surge of new students — many from immigrant families — will stuff Northern Virginia’s public schools during the next five years, just as school populations in the commonwealth’s southern communities are expected to wane.
Roughly 1.27 million students are projected to attend public school in Virginia during the 2014-15 school year, or about 50,000 more students than this autumn’s estimated enrollment of 1.22 million, according to a University of Virginia study.
About 85 percent of those new students will flood the hallways of Fairfax, Prince William and Loudoun counties’ public schools. Student enrollments in each of those three counties are projected to rise by more than 12,000 youths, according to the U.Va. study.
“Most of the population growth in the state over the last few years has been in Northern Virginia, and the school enrollment is following along,” said Mike Spar, a University of Virginia demographer and research associate.
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Current and projected student enrollments in Virginia:
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Area 2009-10 school year 2014-15 school year Percentage change
Virginia: 1.214 million 1.266 million Up 4.3 percent
Arlington: 19,297 20,218 Up 4.8 percent
Fairfax: 169,069 182,001 Up 7.6 percent
Loudoun: 59,111 76,541 Up 29.5 percent
Prince William: 76,121 90,306 Up 18.6 percent
Virginia Beach: 69,940 68,385 Down 2.2 percent
Source: Weldon Cooper Center at the University of Virginia
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Most of those new students will be young, according to the U.Va. study, with two-thirds of the enrollment increase coming to kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms. High school upper-class enrollment is expected to drop slightly statewide by 2015. Spar said Northern Virginia’s population growth is not a new trend, but the influx of immigrant families to the state’s northern communities is a more recent development.
“It’s hard to track where families come from, but there has clearly been a big, big increase in the number of immigrants moving to Northern Virginia,” Spar said, explaining that most of those immigrants have been Hispanic or Chinese.
Spar said students who are immigrants or the children of immigrants would make up a big chunk of Northern Virginia’s student enrollment growth spurt.
Virginia’s population of Hispanic residents younger than age 45 is expected to balloon by roughly 120,000 people during the next 15 years, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The state’s white population below age 45 is expected to fall by 126,000 during the period.
Meanwhile, student enrollments throughout the state’s more southern regions are projected to decline, according to the study. Virginia Beach’s student population is projected to drop the most among those 53 school districts expected to shed students.
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