Utah disputes data on school-age kids

The Beehive State has the nation's highest ratio of elementary school-age children, with 355,079 children ages 5 to 13 comprising 14.9 percent of the total population, according to new census population estimates.

But Utah isn't included in a list of six states that saw an increase in that age group from July 1, 2003, to July 1, 2004, according to the estimates released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.

In fact, the census shows a slight decline in Utah's school-age population, and that's something Utah researchers — and school officials — take issue with.

Robert Spendlove, manager of demographic and economic analysis for the Governor's Office of Planning and Budget, said Utah's public school enrollment grew by nearly 2 percent from 2003 to 2004.

The census estimate, however, shows a 0.3 percent dip in the state's population ages 5 to 13 and a 0.7 percent decline in 14- to 17-year-olds from 2003 to 2004.

Spendlove said there were 495,682 students enrolled in Utah's public schools last year — up about 8,700 students from the previous year.

"While in the latter '90s Utah did see a drop in its school-age population and enrollment, beginning in 2001, school enrollment started to grow," Spendlove said.

Based on grade-by-grade enrollment, it looks like the growth will continue as more young students start school, said Patty Murphy, minimum school program budget administrator for the State Office of Education.

This year, there were about 6,800 more new kindergartners than high school seniors, Murphy said. Even factoring in early graduation and dropout rates, enrollment shows more young students entering school, she said.

Utah's birth rate is another telling growth indicator, said Pam Perlich, senior research economist at the University of Utah's Bureau of Economic and Business Research.

Utah saw a record 50,527 births in 2004, and that number is expected to continue to climb, Perlich said.

She said births have been rising since the early 1990s, and many of the children born since then are now in school.

"The only thing that could wipe this out is a big out-migration," Perlich said. "What we see is more people are moving into the state."

The high school and young adult population is currently in decline, however, after a dip in births in the late 1980s, she said.