WELLFLEET — As housing costs have made the Outer Cape increasingly unaffordable for young families, local schools are recruiting students from other towns to combat dwindling enrollment. The Wellfleet Elementary School Committee voted on April 8 to offer places in its kindergarten to third-grade classrooms in the upcoming school year to students from across the Cape through the state’s school choice program. And school officials in Truro say they are boosting efforts to attract out-of-district students.
According to state data, enrollment in both Wellfleet and Truro has plunged by 30 percent in the last four years. Meanwhile, enrollment at Eastham Elementary has stayed relatively steady, and Provincetown has seen its school population grow, in large part due to its own outreach campaign to attract school choice students.
School choice is a state program that allows families to enroll their children in schools in communities other than where they live, with tuition paid by the sending district to the receiving district. But with a finite number of school-age children on the Outer Cape, elementary schools from Wellfleet to Provincetown are competing to recruit enough students to fill their classrooms.
Wellfleet Elementary, with a student population of 78, is seeking school choice students for the first time since 2019. It is the only elementary school in the Nauset Regional School District doing so.
During the school committee discussion, Wellfleet Principal Adam O’Shea said the move would require the school to think about “branding — and who we are. What is it that makes Wellfleet different?” He added that it is “not about competition.”
Provincetown Supt. Gerry Goyette has said that Outer Cape schools are “jockeying” for students, though he added last week, “I don’t know if I would say it’s a competition. I would just say that we have a nice school program.”
Provincetown’s five-year strategic plan explicitly calls for increasing its school choice numbers by four or five each year through “advertising, open houses, and parent outreach.” The plan has worked: Provincetown’s enrollment has increased by 8 percent in the last four years, with students from other towns now outnumbering local students. The choice students include 32 from Truro and 11 from Wellfleet.
While Truro Central School previously focused on retaining a 6th-grade class, Principal Patrick Riley said school officials have begun to discuss how to enter the competition to attract new students through school choice. The school currently has 15 students from other towns and sends 16 pre-K to 5th-grade students to other towns. There are 67 school choice spots available for next year, Riley said.
“There is no question” the schools are competing for students, said Riley. “We have to be equally competitive to attract and retain students.”
Towns pay about $20,000 to send a student to Nauset District school for grades that are not offered in their own schools. But for Truro 6th-graders and Provincetown middle-schoolers, families can send their children to Nauset through school choice, which costs towns $5,000 per student. The difference is large enough that Truro Central continues to offer sixth grade even though no students have been in the class since 2022. Riley said there will be two 6th-graders next year.
Enrollment at Nauset’s middle and high schools has also dropped significantly, while public school enrollment statewide has increased each year since 2021. The number of school-choice students opting into the school district has dropped by over 40 percent in the last four years, while the number of students opting out of the district has increased steadily, resulting in a net loss of 140 students over four years. The middle school has 53 school-choice students this year, with two from Provincetown and nine from Truro.
Plans for Wellfleet
O’Shea said a large part of opening Wellfleet Elementary to choice is to give students more social experience. The current kindergarten class has just six students. O’Shea wants to bring that number up to 14. So far, the incoming kindergarten class has 10, with four spots open to students from other towns.
School choice spots are also available in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades for next year. The deadline for submitting applications is June 1, O’Shea said, although he is hoping to reopen the process after that with permission from the state.
Another priority is to bring Wellfleet students who attend school elsewhere back to Wellfleet. Currently, there are 14 school-aged children in Wellfleet who attend schools in other towns. O’Shea found that many families send their children to schools offering more child care; he has been working to expand Wellfleet’s after-school program.
Wellfleet parent Elspeth Hay said that while she was intrigued by Provincetown’s International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum, she ultimately chose to send her two daughters to Wellfleet Elementary to keep them close to home. “Being in our community has always trumped the educational benefits that we’ve been curious about in other districts,” Hay said. “It felt important not just what they were learning but where they were learning and in what community.”
But Hay believes that parents ultimately benefit from school choice, not only by getting to choose the best fit for their children but also by raising educational standards across the Cape.
“School choice incentivizes a little bit of healthy competition between different schools. A lot of what is happening in Wellfleet now is because we have a really energetic new principal,” she said. “I think a little healthy competition between the schools isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It means that our schools keep getting better.”
While Truro parent Nurys Camargo has lived in several towns on the Outer Cape, sending her children to Truro Central School has been a constant. She grew up in Truro and attended Central School there with siblings and cousins.
“It was huge for me to have my kids there,” Camargo said. “The teachers have such a strong connection with the students. They are really involved.” Camargo’s family moved to the Cape from Guatemala when she was young. Administrators at the school helped the family through the transition.
