Class of 2025 said to be the smallest-ever graduating class at 39 students
It was six years ago when Tracy Area Public School Supt. Chad Anderson met with teachers and parents about future enrollment at the Tracy schools. He remembers telling his audience that the district is likely looking at a drop in enrollment by between 25-75 students.
“Over the last 10 years, it’s been slowly declining,” Anderson said. “If you look back at that 25 to 75 number, we’re probably down around 60, so it’s in that ballpark. We would’ve been a little better off (this year) but we had two larger families move out of the district before the school year started that we weren’t expecting.” As it happens, losing just those two families cost the district 15 students. But even with those kids, enrollment this year still signals a precipitous loss from 2024. And Anderson shared his trepidation at this week’s school board meeting.
“Looking back to ’08 and look ahead to 2031, I expected it to continue to decline like this; this year was an anomaly because it dropped more, that’s why I’m concerned,” Anderson said. “I wasn’t predicting those families would leave, and 15 kids is a big deal.”
This year’s graduating class is 39, which the district said is the lowest ever on record; this year’s kindergarten class stands at 38. In-between, the numbers are all over the board, ranging from 39 in the fourth-grade class to 65 in this year’s seventh grade group. The 39 number will rebound to the lower 50s for the Class of 2027.
The total enrollment in both schools is 608 as of this week. That is down 42 from last year at the same time and down 68 from September 2024. The last time enrollment topped 700 students was 2017 at 712.
“The trajectory will go up next year, plus we’re looking at hopefully around 20 Milroy students that will come to Tracy,” Anderson said, referring to the consolidation with Milroy Public Schools for the 2026–27 school year. “That alone will get us up to where we were budgeting for and expecting to be as long as there are no other anomalies, or things that could happen that are out of our control.”
Of course, student enrollment has a direct effect on the state aid a school district receives. Districts get a per pupil formula-based allowance, along with different categorical aid based on things like sparsity and their number of free and reduced lunch students. Because the next levy limitation and certification has yet to be finalized, Anderson couldn’t give an exact figure of what categorical aid the district will receive per student for the next cycle.
School districts also receive aid for declining enrollment.
Tracy Area Public Schools is not alone when it comes to declining enrollment, Andersons said. Like other area schools, TAPS faces ups and downs in enrollment numbers on a yearly basis.
“There are a handful here and there that might have an increase in enrollment due to other factors,” Anderson said. “When I was the athletic director and assistant principal in Canby, we were at 90 kids a class; I suppose they’re in the 30s and 40s now. YME has decreased, MCC … it’s not uncommon.” If you look at all the schools in the 70s, 80s and even 90s, we were all bigger.”
While there is a formula for determining how much state aid school district receive, there is no such equation to determine the consistent decline in enrollment. Anderson points to the widespread decline of large family farms as one contributor.
“When I was a kid, on every corner of land there was a farm,” he said. “They just slowly have been disappearing. Obviously, that’s a big part of it, and that spills into the economy and the community as well. It’s less farms, smaller families.”
Anderson cites Milroy’s school as a prime example of the effect of things like a declining number of family farms and smaller families in general can have. Milroy’s K-6 school has been forced to consolidate with Tracy because of a lack of students, 15 years after a partnership was formed between Tracy and Balaton.
“For Milroy, which used to have a high school, it was, ‘OK, let’s go down to a K-8, now lets do K-6;’ now they’re at a point where they can’t do it because they don’t have the kids,” Anderson said. “I think it’s so important for the legacy of Tracy schools that we consolidated with Balaton in 2010, and now in 2025 we’re consolidating with Milroy.”
Another major contributor is the inception of online schooling, which has grown in popularity since the pandemic year of 2020. Online and homeschooled children are not counted in a district’s enrollment.
“That used to not be around, and now that’s a choice,” said Anderson. “(Homeschooling) is a factor and does take students out of the school. It’s not unique to Tracy.”
The silver lining, Anderson said, is TAPS has been able to continue to offer its students a plethora of educational experiences such as College Now and career tech and education courses. Smaller enrollment also means smaller classes and better students-toteacher ratios.
“We’re offering more today than we did in the ’70s,” said Anderson. “Our kindergarten, first-, second- and third-grade classes are small — you’ve got 15 kids a class. “Parents really like the small-school setting. You have to look at the positives; we’re still offering a great education to all of our kids. It’s just we have less kids, and that’s totally out of everyone’s control.”
