A California charter school operator asked for permission to miss a financial cushion target required to cover its bond payments after enrollment slid at its mostly Hispanic campuses amid President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.
Aspen Public Schools said that enrollment fell by 95 students in the academic school year that ended in May, costing it about $2 million in revenue, mostly from per-pupil state funding, according to regulatory filings. The operator runs three charter schools in Fresno, a city of more than half a million people roughly 200 miles north of Los Angeles, in a region known for agriculture and farming.
Citing that revenue loss,
Enrollment began to drop in the middle of the academic year as rumors about immigration raids circulated through the community. Aspen offers roughly 175 days of instruction, meaning the middle of the school year fell shortly after the November election and in the days ahead of winter break. Arrests, immigration sweeps and deportations escalated following Trump's inauguration in January.
"They were afraid to come to school," Shelly Lether, Aspen Public Schools chief executive officer, said during a Dec. 2 investor call. "The region was very unsettled and families were afraid."
Aspen's request shows how Trump's immigration policies are rippling into school budgets and bond markets. Districts with large immigrant populations — from Chicago to Miami to Los Angeles — have reported declines in enrollment and attendance as families fearful of enforcement keep children home or relocate, threatening per-pupil funding that is a key revenue source for many public and charter schools. In California's Central Valley, schools saw student absences climb by 22% in just the first two months of the year, Stanford University research found.
Declining enrollment is
The Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest in the country, reported a 4% drop in overall enrollment, amounting to about $140 million less in per pupil funding. In Florida, Miami-Dade County Public Schools approved a $7.4 billion budget in September that included a $21.5 million reserve fund in anticipation that fewer students — especially fewer newly arrived foreign-born students — will enroll than projected.
The Chelsea Public Schools, a Boston-area school system that serves a city of roughly 40,000 where nearly half of its residents are foreign-born — and is an area that has been hit hard by ICE raids — has seen a $1.4 million drop in revenue because of enrollment, according to its latest budget.
"One could see the attendance data as a leading early indicator of other potential impacts, both for children who might be experiencing anxiety and longer run educational implications, but also for local economies, districts and employers," said Thomas Dee, an economist and a professor at Stanford University's Graduate School of Education. "There are multiple implications of this for child development, for the functioning of schools, but also for municipal finances."
At the Aspen Public Schools, enrollment had declined to 793 students across its three campuses by the end of May, Lether said. It has since rebounded to about 964 currently, she said, after extensive community outreach and marketing efforts helped lure new families to its campuses. The charter operator cut 12 jobs and brought in an external financial consultant to help manage the unexpected drop in revenue.
"We are in good financial standing today. We are meeting our debt service, our obligations," Lether said. "We've never missed or delayed our bond payments nor do we anticipate that happening at all."
Fresno County, a vital hub to the state's agricultural industry and home to California's fifth largest city, has just over a million people, including nearly 215,000 born outside of the US. About 73% of Aspen's students are Hispanic, 9% African American and 8% white, Lether noted. Roughly 80% of its entire student body is identified as socio-economically disadvantaged, according to the most recent Fresno Unified School District data.
Aspen's plight "highlights the effects of these crackdowns on children — less enrollment means less money for the district," said Dora Lee, director of research at Belle Haven Investments, which holds approximately $23.3 billion in assets, the majority of which is municipal debt. "But at the end of the day, those are children that are not getting the education that they need, which is very unfortunate."
