Districtwide enrollment rises; strong growth trends continue at North Eugene HS, Arts & Technology Academy, River Road/El Camino del Río Elementary
Schools in Eugene School District 4J are attracting more families to enroll: Student enrollment increased by 120 students this fall to 16,313, resuming a recent trend of growth reversing many previous years of declining enrollment. Every new student is welcome.
Schools go up or down in enrollment every year, but enrollment trends are exceptional and unmistakable at certain schools.
School-level trends
North Eugene High School, Arts & Technology Academy, River Road/El Camino del Río Elementary School and some other schools have seen sustained growth trends in recent years.
North Eugene High School continued to grow this year to 1,026 students, after some previous years of declining enrollment. With a schoolwide International Baccalaureate program available to all students (unique among 4J high schools), strong career technical education offerings, and new leadership, North Eugene has seen a significant change in trend, with enrollment up 15% over the past 3 years.
Arts & Technology Academy has seen exceptional growth, standing out among the district’s eight neighborhood middle schools with a growth of 26% over the past 3 years and a staggering 69% increase over the past 6 years since 2013, from 262 to 443. Arts & Technology Academy is a state model STEM Lab School emphasizing STEM studies (or STEAM, including art), focusing on science, technology, engineering and math among the general middle school curriculum.
River Road/El Camino del Río Elementary School has seen major growth over the past few years and currently serves 426 students, up 29% in the past 3 years. Camino del Río’s Spanish/English dual immersion program is unique among 4J schools as a neighborhood elementary school offering high-quality language immersion instruction to all students in the neighborhood as well as school choice students.
District enrollment history
Rising enrollment is a change in Eugene School District 4J. District enrollment grew steadily through Eugene’s growth and the Baby Boom to a peak of nearly 22,000 students in 1969, and had been trending generally downward since then, to a low of 16,006 students in 2014.
Now enrollment is on the rise again, with students coming both from within the district and from out-of-district transfer students choosing to enroll in 4J. More students enrolled in 4J schools in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2019, with a dip in 2018, bringing enrollment back up to 16,313 this year. (These figures do not include alternative education providers or charter schools; the total 2019 enrollment with these programs is 17,415.)
This recent span has been the first enrollment increase since 2003, and the largest growth since the 1990s.
Class sizes
The district has placed more teachers at North Eugene, Arts & Technology Academy, River Road/El Camino del Río, and several other schools to respond to higher-than-projected enrollment and shrink overlarge class sizes.
Teachers hired to shrink class sizes
