RALEIGH In a sign of things to come for the state and the nation, the Wake County school system is no longer made up of a majority of white students.
New figures released Tuesday by Wake show that children from minority groups account for a majority of the 143,289 students in the state’s largest school system. It’s a trend that has been years in the making, fueled in part by the fast growth in Hispanic enrollment.
“It’s a blend of immigration, demographics shifts and birth rates,” said James Johnson, a professor at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and a co-writer of a 2006 study on the economic effect of Hispanics in North Carolina.
Johnson said Hispanic residents in the state are younger and their families are on average having three children. By comparison, he said, non-Hispanic white families are having an average of one child.
Wake’s 20,909 Hispanic students account for 14.6 percent of the district’s enrollment; there were 295 Hispanic students in Wake in 1987. At the same time, the percentage of black students in Wake schools has declined, while the percentage of Asian students, though still small, has doubled.
The Kenan-Flagler study estimated that 45 percent of Hispanics in North Carolina were living in the U.S. illegally, and that educating the children of illegal immigrants costs the state an estimated $210 million a year; in 1995, that figure was less than $10 million. It’s not known what portion of Wake’s Hispanic students are the children of illegal immigrants. (more…)