St. Paul Public Schools this fall saw its greatest enrollment decline in a decade, but officials aren’t ready to pin the blame on new start times.

State-funded preK-12 enrollment is down 948 students from last year — 2.6 percent — and 3,644 since 2007, according to the district’s preliminary count. The district was expecting a decrease of 625 students this fall.

The downward trend has troubled school board members, who have called for surveys of those who have left. Phone calls to the parents of former district students will begin in the coming weeks.

During a board meeting Tuesday, Superintendent Joe Gothard said he’d rather focus on those who have chosen the St. Paul district and giving them reasons to stay.

“We have to serve the students that are here in incredible ways,” Gothard said.

At the same time, Gothard suggested the district may need to consolidate.

“We also can’t continue to operate buildings that are far under capacity when they’re scraping by to offer what I think our community wants,” he said.

In an enrollment report to the board Tuesday, Chief Operating Officer Jackie Turner pointed to increased competition from charter schools, as well as class-size limits the teachers union won during contract negotiations in 2014; although parents like smaller classes, the limits reduce the number of students who can enroll at popular schools.

The district says 63 percent of school-age children in the city were enrolled in district schools last year, down from 66 percent two years earlier.

Charter schools last year enrolled 21 percent of the city’s students, private schools 9 percent, and other school districts 7 percent through open enrollment.

The district’s research staff looked into the possible effects of new start times this fall but came up with nothing conclusive.

“We’re not ready to say that start times had a negative or a positive impact,” Turner said.

She added, however, that kindergarten saw a big drop this fall.

“It is of concern,” she said. “That may signal that there was a dissatisfaction with our change in the start times.”

The district changed start times for some 23,000 students this fall in hopes that teenagers would get more sleep. Most middle and high schools are starting an hour later, at 8:30 a.m., while many elementary schools now start at 7:30 — to the chagrin of many young families.

EARLY SCHOOLS LOSE STUDENTS

A Pioneer Press analysis of enrollment changes from June to December found student numbers have dropped the most in schools that start earlier.

The district has 21 elementary schools that moved from 8:30 a.m. starts to 7:30 this year. As a group, they’ve lost 490 students, or 5 percent, and enrollment is down for all but three of those schools.

Sixteen buildings — mostly middle and high schools — are starting one hour later this year.

Enrollment in that group is up slightly, by 48 students.

The gain might have been higher had the district not opened E-STEM Middle School in Woodbury, creating more sixth-grade competition for two nearby middle schools in that group.

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The school district’s own analysis took into consideration whether schools were trending up or down in recent years. Those trends largely continued, whether the start times changed or not.

Board member Jon Schumacher asked for a more in-depth examination of start times and school options, including district and charter schools, across the city.

“At least we’d be able to see a better picture of what’s happening,” he said.