Hispanic pupils surging in Utah

Deborah Bulkeley:

Some 71 percent of Utah's new public and charter school students over the past five years have been minorities, and that growth was largely fueled by a booming Hispanic population, the Utah Office of Education reports.

Utah schools gained 20,188 Hispanic students between 2000 and 2005, more growth than every other ethnic/racial group combined, including white students, according to the education office.

The 62,218 Hispanic students enrolled statewide now account for about 12 percent of students, said Patty Murphy, state education finance and budgeting specialist.

Overall, Utah's school population grew by 34,743 students over five years to a statewide enrollment of 510,012. Hispanic students accounted for 58 percent of that growth.

The growth has been largely in areas with strong job markets and bedroom communities, new construction and comparatively affordable housing, Murphy said.

"Our numbers coincide perfectly with new housing construction," she said. "The numbers are audited, and we feel pretty confident about it."

One-year growth in the total school population was also rapid, up by 14,330 students this year, the highest one-year growth since 1982, Murphy said. Next year's growth is expected to continue at about the same rate, she said.

She said nationwide signs that housing markets are cooling could impact that growth somewhat.

"Utah has its own independent job growth and housing market," she said. "It could cool off, but it's definitely not going to drop suddenly or drastically."

Utah's minority student population boom will be among topics discussed today at the Utah Education Deans Colloquium 2005 at Thanksgiving Point.

Murphy said the increasing numbers of minority students — a segment of whom require English language services — mean the state needs to gear up to provide those services. Minority achievement gaps are also a growing concern, she said.

The increasing enrollment seems to be a shift from a trend in the 1990s when Utah had a large influx of Hispanic immigrants, primarily from Mexico, arriving without children.

"Now they are bringing children," Perlich said.

She said it appears that rather than being primarily working-age men, new Hispanic immigrants are arriving as families, or it could be that men who moved here during the 1990s are now bringing families.

Either way, Perlich said, "school-age Hispanic kids are moving to Utah at disproportionate rates."

Murphy said one of the state's most significant population shifts is happening in Granite School District, where the population of white students, largely concentrated on the Salt Lake Valley's east side, is declining.

"New homes are being constructed on the west side, and that's where the growth is occurring," in the district, which is about 68 percent white, down from 77 percent in 2000.

Michael Clara, former chairman of the Coalition of Minorities Advisory Committee to the Utah Board of Education, said the education office information "means that we are behind" in educating a diverse population of students.

Clara said the Hispanic growth is no surprise since several indicators — from membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to the U.S. Census Bureau — are pointing to it. He noted that Ogden School District is now one of the state's "minority majority" districts and has a Hispanic enrollment of 43 percent.

"My hope is that at one point we can just drop the categories of ethnicity and just look at children, and be concerned about educating all children equally," Clara said. "We almost have to do that when ethnic minority students outnumber Caucasian kids."

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