Decatur 2010 Census Confirms Family Influx
Decatur Metro | July 25, 2011
We’ve already cut Decatur’s 2010 Census data a couple of ways over the past few months, and had a lengthy discussion about the decline of black households inside the city. But what about that OTHER most talked about Decatur demographic?
That’s right, I’m talking about families with kids.
A reader points to this great website that very clearly shows the growth in various demographics between the 2000 and 2010 Census, among them households with children. Here’s the breakdown on households by family-type:
2000 2010 % change
- Under 6 years old: 399 698 75%
- Under 6 years and 6-17 years: 192 305 59%
- 6-17 years only: 530 730 38%
- No children under 18 years: 1,462 1,603 10%
- Male householder only w/kids: 195 216 11%
- Female householder only w/kids: 1,076 984 -9%
Note that this is HOUSEHOLD data and doesn’t take into account the number of children in each household. However, this might be the first concrete dataset we’ve seen which confirms what many of you have been reporting for years: an impressive/scary/reaffirming increase among the youngest children set. Just to be clear: the number of households with children under 6 years old is nearly THE SAME as households with kids 6-17 years old. That’s certainly something to take note of considering that’s a 6 year age span compared to an 11 year age span.
That discrepancy, combined with general increases in all three husband/wife/kid groups gives a very real idea of the enrollment issues City Schools of Decatur having been dealing with and will have to accommodate in the coming years.
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These numbers are not surprising.
The enrollment tsunami / tidal wave of elementary kids is coming to DCS. With many schools around Decatur struggling due to poor financial, parental and community support …more and more families will be trying to get into Decatur’s school system.
I’ll say it before anyone else does, just ’cause I can:
FREE WESTCHESTER!
We should talk sometime about why I was not very impressed by Westchester and removed 2 of my 3 children who started there (10 years apart) and i did not even bother with Decatur schools for my 3rd.
Uh-oh, AR– I was totally yanking the collective Westchester chain by my remark (since I don’t have kids, I won’t be affected by this)…but you, now– you’re a brave man. You’re going to incur the wrath of the host who believe that CSD are sacrosanct, especially the late lamented Westchester…better put your raincoat on!
I’ve thought about this post for awhile and don’t want to get into a discussion of principal styles and individual school cultures because it’s impossible to do without having a public discussion of individuals some of whom still live in our community. I just want to go on the record as saying we were one family for whom Westchester was a wonderful, life-changing experience. But we knew others like yours who felt differently. I think that can be said for any of our CSD schools, past and present. Many families try out CSD schools for a few years and then go to private schools for a better fit. Some of us wondered whether a magnet school model might have worked well in the original CSD reconfiguration of 2004. In that model, your family might have preferred the true Expeditionary Learning model being used at Clairemont.
My beef with what happened to Westchester wasn’t whether or not it was a superior or inferior school compared to others in Decatur–the Clairemont and Westchester communities should never have been pitted against one another at the last minute they way they were. My beef is that it was a vibrant, high-functioning school for many, many families, including the Gateway community, and it was a shame to dismantle it because of inadequate projections, only to immediately start adding on classrooms, then trailers, then build a new school. It was a waste to just shut down a community school working so well rather than figure out a way to incorporate it into a reconfiguration.
You know, this always makes me grumpy and full of “tol’-you-so’s!” Anyone with a lick of sense coulda counted the baby balloons, peeked into Glenlake Pool on a hot summer day, or just watched the stroller brigade downtown and seen that boom was already here …..but NOOOO…
Free Westchester, +1
Get off of my lawn.
Anyone know if the underground sprinklers still work? Kiddie bathrooms still intact? The stage and the cafeteria still look in good shape, but kitchen equipment went to another school so it will have to be replaced. The Westchester, A Community Learning for Life! sign still looks pretty good. Get ready….
Of note, I ran into a dual-professional Decatur family this past weekend that has a 3 1/2 year old plus a younger one and is looking at private kindergartens now because they are worried about the stability of CSD school zones. Since they bought their house a few years before starting to have children, they’ve seen their street go from Westchester to Oakhurst to Clairemont and they are worried that it will then change again back to Westchester. Being newer parents and still on the outside of CSD, they didn’t seem reassured when I said that it all works out and they’ll love Westchester!
Curious: what did Westchester drop off/pick up do to traffic on Scott back in the day?
We walked so I never paid much attention. But my memory is that an awful lot of families didn’t bother with front drop-off. They would use one of the two dead-end streets that have paths to the back of the school. Or park on Westchester and walk around the corner to school. So my memory is that Westchester Ave. bore the traffic congestion, not Scott.
I think the sidewalks have been improved since that time. The major problem I found back in the day wasn’t the speed of the traffic because it was all backed up and slow in the morning anyway, but the vegetation. There’s a bunch of yards with a back fence between the house and Scott so the owners never even see the vegetation overgrowing the sidewalk and they have no way to get to it anyway. The City doesn’t have jurisdiction (but it seemed to respond to cries for help anyway). The state (or is it the county?) which does have jurisdiction paid no attention.
Scott Blvd. did back up for those, like my family, coming from across Ponce de Leon, who had to turn left off of Scott. I remember I could not turn into the parking lot because of the number of cars waiting to unload or load. I had to go up to Westchester Drive (not far away), turn around in someone’s driveway, and go back onto Scott when the light at Claremont was red, and get into a line waiting to get into the school lot, while worrying we would not be rear-ended by a driver speeding down Scott. Ah, my memories of Westchester are not good. Especially the rigid “educational” model.
“Just to be clear: the number of households with children under 6 years old is nearly THE SAME as households with kids 6-17 years old. That’s certainly something to take note of considering that’s a 6 year age span compared to an 11 year age span.”
Do we have any way of knowing what the distribution curve looks like within the 6-17 year old category of family? In other words, were the age categories (<6 and 6-17) created to reflect the frequency distributions or were they established prior to having data (or established for some other reason independent of this year's data, e.g., for comparability with prior data sets)? Guess I could go look at the website myself, but trying not to get that invested right now (must do work and not spend all day on DM!) and maybe you have a ready answer.
Was this website available back in 2003-3004 when we paid consultants good money to tell us that enrollment was declining? Even though I will freely chant “Free Westchester”, this is a serious question. With this kind of website around, it’s pretty easy to guess what will happen next in the short run, short of some huge unlikely phenomenon which drives out all those families with children under age 6 years. A lot has changed in terms of web-based easy-to-query databases over the last 8 years. Was this kind of data not easily accessible then?
Back in 2003-2004, the only comparison you could have made was 2000 vs. 1990, no?
All the yearly data is based on estimates. And Atlanta found out how wrong that data could be earlier this year!
Ok, I thought maybe it had more immediate annual estimates, e.g. those inter-census estimates that are done sometimes based on ????correction factors???? Yeah, 1990 to 2000 probably showed a declining picture if one just drew a line from Point A to Point B. But I’ll bet the line was actually already curving up a little, if one could have seen the intermediate data points, and certainly the reality on the ground was obvious to many. I still wish they had counted the babies in the baby carriages!
I remember back in 2003 reading or hearing that enrollment was declining. My children weren’t not yet in CSD but I remember thinking they have to be kidding themselves to think that enrollment was declining. I wish that CSD had spent money on some temp workers to take a citywide door-to-door survey. I be they would have found out that enrollment wasn’t going to be declining.
I think the school administrators are kidding thenselves, or is it us?
What’s really scary about this is our new $25 Million debt load from 5th Ave 4/5 Academy may need trailers within a couple of years. CSD is already raising the millage (approved by city commissioners recently) to cover this debt as well as the new principle and teachers. If Westchester is re-opened, that is even more $ needed.
Does anyone remember what the current enrollment/capacities are for DHS and Renfroe? Pat/Judd?
I know there’s a bit more room at both, but wondering what current enrollment in kindergarten would look like stretched across those two schools.
What trailers? CSD only uses Learning Cottages…
Too bad they don’t use Office Cottages too. Then we’d have another school building available.
Whoops! Meant “principal”, not principle. Forgot, they are our pals!
About 10 years, in the days when Glennwood was a K-5, someone told me that family sizes were decreasing. CSD had more families with 4, 5, and 6 kids in a family. Yes, there are more families with children in Decatur, and more actual children, but this data doesn’t tell the whole story.
That’s in the data too! Family size was 2.96 in 2000. In 2010 it was exactly the same.
But I agree that family size will probably decrease a bit in the coming years, due to the recession, the 80 hour weeks that most Decatur residents work, and other factors. I just don’t think it can compensate for the influx.
I’ll be very curious to see the effect of the recession and work trends on family size. A lot of my predictions about the effect of the recession on Decatur have not come true so far. To my surprise, I’m still seeing lots of families in Decatur with the mom (or sometimes the dad now) leaving the workplace for awhile and families having a third or fourth child. While a lot of moms are rejoining the workforce or increasing their hours as their children hit Renfroe or DHS, I think it’s always been that way.
I think a lot of us are going to be in shock when our families hit college age. Costs to attend college are going up steadily, sometimes drastically, while many of us have been coasting along with steady salaries or even some declines or hiatuses in earning for child rearing. Meanwhile, fewer and fewer options for scholarships and loans are out there. It’s a bit scarey.
+1, although 1 really isn’t enough, is it?
Love the stick drawing! It’s right on target. Just needs a goat or chicken!
Karass, I think the data officially supports our opening of a kids’ shoe store.
That’s my instinct too! But the last time I was at Sprong, an upscale children’s shoe store in Buckhead, they said they looked at opening a branch in Decatur but ran some business analyses that did not support doing so. They did open one in Sandy Springs but closed it when it appeared that parents in that area preferred to drive to Buckhead to buy their expensive shoes, rather than buy them locally. They’d tell their Sandy Springs customers that it was the same selection of shoes but the customers didn’t believe them.
On the other hand, I’m thinking of good value, high quality, well-fitting, practical children’s shoes with really good store service and lots of community connections, not so much trendy and expensive. My heart tells me that my shoe store concept could be the Little Shop of Stories of children’s shoes. My brain tells me that I’m way too business-naive and security-oriented to even think about this. Someone take my idea……my reward will be being able to say “I knew it!” (Kind of like the CSD enrollment projections!)
Yes please! And carry extra wides. I have to internet shop (and return and shop and return) because of my kids’ freakishly wide feet. I would love to spend that money locally.
Yes, that’s what got me started on this whole obsession for a good local children’s shoestore. My toddlers had fat feet that did not fit into your average Target shoe.
I’m not surprised by this data. When we bought our house in WP 12 years ago, there were three school-age children on our street. Well, those children are out of the system now, of course, but our little street now has 18 (!!!) children. And probably half of them, or more, are not even in CSD schools yet.
Has anyone ever floated the idea of contacting those fine folks who did the studies earlier in the decade that predicted declining enrollment? Are they aware of their errors? How much were they paid? Did their contract have all sorts of protections built in so that they could say Martians would enroll in high numbers and not have any liability for the data they produced? Given the amount of time and effort spent by CSD and parents trying to plan for a future that never happened, would a request accompanied by a smile (or a slightly-snarky grass-roots blogging campaign) embarrass them enough to refund some of our money?
They may not even be in business, mind you, as they probably overestimated the continued need for their services…
Besides their contract, you should look at the RFP, prepared by the Board of Education and staff. I hope the school system did one (but maybe they did not). You hope they did not contract with the consultant based on a sole source. As someone who has been a consultant, and contracted with dozens of them, I have learned that the quality of the finished product is often related to the quality of the Request for Proposals.
Ok, I’ll step in it. I believe that demographer was the contractor CSD used for renovations. I can’t recall the name.
Really? I was too naive back then to notice this sort of thing. But isn’t demography a different set of degrees, skills, and experience from and building design and construction?
They were just the lead firm. If I recall correctly, they subbed out the projections, but I don’t know who to.
So, CSD probably never demanded revised and better projections or a refund because they were using the same lead firm to handle the remodelling of Clairemont and Winnona Park to handle the increased enrollment due to the consolidation based on the projections?
Ugh I’ve always wanted to say this to soccer moms with those irritating decals on their rear windshield: NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOUR FAMILY’S COMPOSITION. There, that feels better.
Hear, hear. Lamest trend ever.
Actually more of a fad than a trend. And while I loathe these stickers, poofy bangs on girls, pet rocks and ‘Frankie Says Relax’ shirts were much lamer. (Actually those shirts were priceless because no one got the inside joke, a la YMCA.)
Amen to that.
I haven’t seen any yet. But then again, my world is limited to Decatur and work. There’s room for someone clever and snide to do a number on our town by coming up with Decatur-specific stick figures.
I did see a somewhat clever twist, the stick figures had skull faces. Having actual Misfits faces would have actually sealed the deal for me.
I wish there was a DM identicon option that provided people with random stick figures.
This is most definitely an OTP phenomenon. Why is that, I wonder?
I have found it kind of disheartening over the past 7-8 years the more families move to decatur, the more “family” places move out of decatur/or close, i.e. my sisters room, etc
Didn’t My Sister’s Room burn down?
Yes, in rather spectacular fashion.
Disheartening? You know, in Decatur, there are many, many gay couples that have children. In other words, “family” with families. Your worldview seems a little 1980’s to me.
What do you think about the number of GLBT families with children in Decatur schools today compared to 10 or 15 or 20 years ago? My impression, based on my experience, is the number of such families in Decatur is way down today compared to 10-15 years ago..Since the census and the school system does not keep such data, I guess my question is really not answerable.
I can only speak for the last ~10 years but the number of GLBT families with children in Decatur schools seemed low to me ten years ago, given Decatur’s diverse ambience, and it seems low to me still. I know a single lesbian Mom who moved to Decatur because of its diversity but left when she didn’t find many other GLBT families at her daughter’s CSD school. On the other hand, my children sure know a lot more GLBT families than I did growing up; the GLBT families we’ve known in CSD have been open about their status and very engaged in the schools. My guess is that the number of GLBT families is gradually increasing in Decatur but not as fast as the families with heterosexual parent(s).
Winnona Park Stud wonders how it is possible to accurately assess the number of transgended residents by mere observation? Perhaps you know more of us than you think.
Good point. Sometimes folks share, sometimes they don’t.
According to City-Data.com (?) I am proud to tell all my big city friends that we live in the city with the second highest percentage of (highly) likely lesbian couples in the US. Holler! Take that NYC, SF and DC. http://www.city-data.com/top2/c15.html If only we could get accurate census data on OUR families.
And check numbers 11, 14, 26, 27, and 70. It must be something in the water.
Hmph! What’s Northampton, Mass got that we ain’t got???
What other places are you talking about? What am I not remembering? Trackside is still around and so is Eddie’s. Don’t know if the clientele is the same as it was in the late 1980s/90s, but the bar’s still there. My Sister’s Room actually started as a special girls’ night at Dupree’s pool hall in Midyown, then they opened up in Decatur.
Midtown has lost more gay bars in the past few years than Decatur ever had to begin with. And it doesn’t have anything to do with a decline in gay population.
I think gay bars, in general, are in decline given wider acceptance of gay people, particularly in liberal minded places like Decatur or intown Atlanta. Further, gays who tend to live in place like Decatur are probably a little older, a little more established, likely partnered (maybe with kids) and less likely to frequent the bars anyway.
Having lived in our fair city (off and on) for over 30 years, I agree that Decatur is not as fun as it was in the 1980 and 1990’s. I mean we really were racially, economically, age, and alternative life style diverse (etc, etc). The current trend makes me sad. A steadily increasing property value has no real relation to happiness.
Just to close the loop, who would be the best person to pose the question to about refunds or commentary from the company who did the demographic assessment?
The two consultants hired by the board were The Sizemore Group and the Boston Consulting Group. As I recall, the latter worked for free. (You get what you pay … .) The Sizemore Group handled demographic trend projections and facility use analysis, while the Boston Group worked hard to bury all of the information in consultant babble, er, excuse me, they developed
[sorry for the premature transmission of the incomplete message!] The last sentence should have read: The Sizemore Group handled demographic trend projections and facility use analysis, while the Boston Group worked hard to bury all of the information in consultant babble, er, developed lots of Powerpoint slides that looked really nice, had fancy multi-syllabic words and made everyone think they were thinking carefully.
Darn good thing we didn’t go forward with annexing another thousand or so into the school system!