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aenal Arifin, a teacher at state-run elementary school SDN Lengkong Kulon I in Pagedangan, Tangerang, said he is aware of the changing landscape of the school’s neighborhood, with fancy shopping malls, affluent housing complexes and hip restaurants just a few hundred meters from his house.

Yet, the only change he truly cares about is that fewer people are enrolling their children at his school, where he has been teaching since 1986. Now in his 50s, Zaenal has witnessed how gentrification has transformed his neighborhood and, consequently, displaced the people who would have enrolled their children at his school.

Zaenal said he has seen how the area is losing its local people as many of them have decided to sell their land to developers and move to other places.

“Having students enroll used to be easier than this,” the sports teacher said. “I guess rich people just don’t register their children at state schools anymore.”

At a land price of more than Rp 10 million (US$759) per square meter, the giant property complex that is Bumi Serpong Damai (BSD) is popular among the upper middle class, but for nearby elementary schools, a hidden disadvantage lingers: people moving into the neighborhood are opting to enroll their children in affluent private schools.

For the last three years, one out of four elementary state schools have been closed down in Lengkong Kulon subdistrict by the city administration as they have struggled to find students, with another school slated for termination next year.

The closing school transferred its last three students to SDN Lengkong Kulon I, which now has a total 96 students from the first to the sixth grade. However, with a declining number of students, the modest school still struggles to find where they fit in the fast-changing environment.

During the school break, Zaenal and several teachers at the school went around the district to place school banners in traditional markets as well as to locate children coming from marginalized families that cannot afford to pay for tuition. The students at his school are not obligated to pay for anything except for their school uniforms.

“We even bought a bike for a poor student who lives quite far from here to make sure that less children spend their time on the streets,” he said.

Aay Fatimah, school principal of SDN Lengkong Kulon II, said she recently received six students from a nearby state school undergoing the closure process.

With a total 140 students, she believes that her school is relatively safe from closure in the near future. However, she could not help but notice that if more local people in the suburb area left Pagedangan, her school would walk on very thin ice. “It is not a matter of the school’s quality — we are just losing the local people and, hence, the students.”

Similar to the conditions of Tangerang regency, young yet privileged families who have moved to Jakarta’s outskirts believe that private schools’ high tuition fees are in line with its quality.

Annual data released by the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) has highlighted that, despite certain pros, some gentrified places have brought a real threat to the existence of public elementary schools.

In 2007, the 384 public elementary schools in Tangerang City thinned out to 341 by 2015, while private elementary schools increased from 99 to 133 during the same period.

Adinda Melodie Bestari, a housewife, is among the people living in South Tangerang who would prefer to enroll her children at a private school due to the “quality difference” between the two. Even though she paid a Rp 50 million enrollment fee and Rp 3 million monthly in tuition for her child’s education, she was certain that state schools in Jakarta’s outskirts was not an option. “As long as I am able to afford it, I want my child to get the best education.”