Durham’s Hispanic population has increased more than 500% in the past 20 years.
This rapid demographic shift has changed DPS’ student population, too.
According to DPS enrollment records, nearly 38% Riverside’s students identified as Hispanic in 2024.
That’s a substantial increase since 2010, when just 16% of the school was Hispanic. With an average increase of 1.6% of the student body yearly, Hispanic students are set to comprise over half of Riverside’s population within a decade.
Students identifying as Hispanic are already the school’s largest ethnic group, (Black and White students make up 27 and 26% of the student population, respectively) and this number is set to increase as the Hispanic population both at Riverside and in Durham continues to grow.
Latino life in Durham, is an archive of information about the diversity within Durham’s Latino community created by Duke University in collaboration with members of the local community. According to its website, one in three children born in Durham will be of Hispanic/Latino descent.
This is likely due to higher birth rates among the Hispanic population and immigration, which explains why schools like Riverside have more young people identifying as Hispanic than ever before. This has created challenges for Durham’s public schools.
Riverside’s changing demographics are similar to Durham’s in many ways. In 1995 Durham’s Hispanic population was 3%. Today, it is upwards of 15% (including mixed individuals), according to Latino Life In Durham.
This is the largest increase of any ethnicity in the county, with over 40,000 people identifying as Hispanic in 2022, compared to just 6,000 in 1995, according to USA FACTS.
Statistics published by Alex Fitzpatrick and Kavya Beheraj for Axios show that Hispanics are now the second largest ethnic group in America.
“The booming Latino community has had interesting effects on the Durham community, especially in the education sector,” according to Latino Life in Durham’s website. “[DPS] has experienced a painful growth spurt while trying to welcome the increasing numbers of Latino/a students walking into a school system that lacks resources to support sufficient ESL instruction and parent/teacher interpretation services.”
