HERMISTON — For years, the Hermiston School District was growing at such a rapid pace, its facilities struggled to keep up with its student population.

Even though the trend has plateaued in recent years, the district’s enrollment falling 4% at the start of the 2020-21 school year is a far cry from the seemingly exponential growth of the boom years.

Student enrollment fell 3.7% across the state, according to the recently released fall membership report from the Oregon Department of Education. The state attributed a significant chunk of the decline to a drop in kindergarten enrollment, a trend Hermiston is seeing as well.

Hermiston’s kindergarten enrollment dropped by 20% compared with the year prior, a development Hermiston School District Superintendent Tricia Mooney attributes to some parents deciding against enrolling their potential kindergarteners during a pandemic year.

The Pendleton School District saw a similar drop in kindergarten enrollment as well, but unlike Hermiston, Pendleton is already in the midst of a prolonged period of falling enrollment.

Pendleton has seen a slow but steady decline in students for years, although Michelle Jones, the Pendleton School District’s director of business services, said the numbers have been leveling off recently.

Pendleton has surveyed departing families in past years as to why they’re leaving the district, with many responding that they’re looking for better economic or housing opportunities elsewhere. Jones said the district will need to wait to study data in future years to determine the long-term effect on enrollment.

Some school districts, like Echo and Umatilla, managed modest growth in a pandemic year, but there was no greater outlier than the InterMountain Education Service District. The IMESD grew from 7 in October 2019 to 503 in October 2020, which represents a 7,086% increase.

While the IMESD provides support services to schools throughout the region, the district typically doesn’t enroll many students directly. IMESD Superintendent Mark Mulvihill said its small student body was usually composed of students that were dealing with social and behavioral issues.

But the IMESD expanded its services to include virtual academies as a way to help local school districts fend off online charter schools like the Baker Web Academy from siphoning off students. While the IMESD may have increased its enrollment, Mulvihill said the per student funding will remain with the students’ home districts.

Instead of a raw head count, the state’s fall membership reports measures in a metric called average daily membership weighted, which weighs student funding based on factors like the number of students in special education or English language learner programs.

Mulvihill anticipates many students will drop out of their respective virtual academy programs once schools reopen.

But Mulvihill thinks the virtual academy model will also become a permanent part of the IMESD infrastructure even after the pandemic is over. Mulvihill said some local families will still want to keep their students online or in a hybrid model.

“I think it is the future,” he said.