COLUMBUS, Ohio (WOWO) — Declining birth rates are leaving school districts across the country with fewer students, more empty seats and difficult decisions about whether to close or consolidate schools according to the Ohio Capital Journal.
Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, describes the trend as “the big shrink,” as districts try to adjust their operations and budgets to a declining student population.
“When there are fewer young people, obviously it’s going to change the shape of public education,” Roza said. “As more and more schools are existing that are half empty, some downsizing needs to take place for them to live in their current financial structure, and districts are really loath to do that.”
More than 1,000 public schools closed nationwide during the 2025-26 school year, according to preliminary data from the National Center for Education Statistics. It marked the fourth consecutive year in which the number of school closures increased.
School closures were common even before the COVID-19 pandemic. Federal education data show more than 1,000 public schools closed during each school year from 2010-11 through 2019-20, before closures declined during the pandemic.
Now, districts are again confronting closures and consolidations as declining enrollment collides with higher operating costs, aging buildings and the expiration of one-time federal pandemic relief money.
Nationwide K-12 enrollment fell from nearly 50.8 million students in 2019 to about 49.4 million in 2024, a decline of 2.8%, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Federal projections estimate enrollment will fall to roughly 46.9 million students by 2031.
Enrollment declined in 40 states between 2019 and 2024. West Virginia had the largest decline at 8.1%, while Hawaii, New Hampshire, Mississippi, New Mexico and Maine each lost more than 7% of their K-12 enrollment.
David Steiner, executive director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and a former New York state education commissioner, said declining enrollment creates a financial problem because many school expenses do not fall along with the number of students.
“Just because your number of students goes down, doesn’t mean that your fixed costs go down,” Steiner said. “(Schools have) got fixed costs, they’ve got budgets that are shrinking, a school population and a teaching force that is shrinking and it’s very, very difficult to put all those pieces together.”
The decline is being driven primarily by lower birth rates, but educators and researchers point to other factors that can compound enrollment losses.
Megan Bowen, high school director at the Colorado-based U.S. Career Institute, said the pandemic accelerated interest in homeschooling, virtual education and other alternatives to traditional public schools.
In Colorado, state Rep. Julie McCluskie, a Democrat who previously worked in a rural school district, said heightened immigration enforcement under the second Trump administration has also contributed to enrollment declines in her community.
“I think the demographic decline in birth rate is an obvious factor to point to, but certainly in my community we have seen immigrants leave because of what’s happening on the national landscape and that has been part of our decline,” McCluskie told Stateline.
As enrollment falls, school boards are weighing how to reduce the number of buildings while maintaining programs and services for students.
In Austin, Texas, the school board approved the closure and consolidation of 10 schools for the 2026-27 school year, affecting nearly 3,800 students.
In Cleveland, Ohio, a restructuring plan will result in 29 fewer schools in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.
Houston, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia are among other major cities that have identified schools for closure or consolidation.
The financial challenge is that districts still have to maintain many of the same basic costs even when fewer students occupy their buildings. Those expenses can include principals, nurses, librarians, custodians, teachers, utilities and building maintenance.
States are taking different approaches to the problem.
Vermont has lost about 20% of its student enrollment over the past two decades. The state recently changed its education funding system and now requires school districts to establish regional committees that will consider potential mergers.
Vermont Education Secretary Zoie Saunders said the enrollment decline has financially strained districts and affected access to public education.
“For the last two decades, the state of Vermont has been struggling to achieve scale,” Saunders told Stateline. “We want those dollars to get into the classroom and so the work that we’re doing in Vermont, is more than right sizing.”
Arkansas has taken a more voluntary approach. A state law enacted in 2004 required districts with 350 or fewer students for two consecutive years to consolidate or be annexed. Lawmakers changed that policy in 2023, making consolidation or annexation voluntary after parents and community members raised concerns about losing rural schools and forcing students onto longer bus rides.
Research on Arkansas’ consolidation policy found either no effect or small positive effects on math and English language arts achievement. The study found no evidence that consolidation reduced overall costs or redirected a larger share of district spending into classroom instruction.
California has established additional requirements for districts considering closures or consolidations.
Following controversy over proposed closures in the Oakland Unified School District, California lawmakers required financially distressed districts to conduct an equity impact analysis before closing or consolidating a school.
The analysis must address why a school was selected, where displaced students would attend, how programs would be maintained, what would happen to the vacant building and how transportation would be handled.
Districts also must consider building conditions, operating expenses and expected savings, unused capacity, student demographics and transportation.
California’s public-school enrollment has fallen by nearly 8% since the 2016-17 school year, representing roughly 485,000 fewer students.
Illinois also has moved toward encouraging districts to study potential reorganizations.
A law enacted in 2025 allows the Illinois State Board of Education to provide grants for districts to conduct consolidation feasibility studies. The voluntary program can provide up to $16,000 for studies examining enrollment projections, building capacity, potential closures, transportation, finances and academic programs.
For families, however, the issue is about more than balancing a school district’s budget.
In Olathe, Kansas, Nicole Trendel has a second grader at Black Bob Elementary, one of six schools recommended for closure by Olathe Public Schools.
The district has cited declining enrollment, lower birth rates, rising home prices and financial pressure from special education costs.
Trendel said parents are also concerned about rising property taxes, school bond measures and the overall cost of raising children.
She said parents want more information about where students would go and what would happen to specialized programs, including a dual-language immersion program that could move students about 2.3 miles to another elementary school.
“We’re just asking to get the full picture,” Trendel said. “We know nothing about where our kids are going. We know nothing about what next year’s gonna look like for them.”
The effects of a closure can extend beyond test scores and enrollment numbers.
A study examining students affected by hundreds of Texas school closures between 1998 and 2015 found that short-term declines in test scores generally faded. But researchers found affected students were less likely to graduate from high school, attend or complete a four-year college or be employed as young adults. The students also had lower earnings in their mid-20s.
Schools can also serve as community hubs, providing after-school programs, health services, family assistance and other resources.
That means closing a building can leave a community with a second problem: what happens to the property after the students are gone.
Angira Sceusi, executive director of RedefinED Atlanta, said states could require districts to specifically track students displaced by consolidation instead of simply measuring the overall performance of the school they enter.
“What are the students from the consolidated school doing?” Sceusi said. “How are they doing as a cohort, and are they thriving or not?”
Sceusi said districts also need to consider the students already attending the school that receives displaced students.
“Even though there’s an existing school that kids are coming into, in effect there is a new environment that they’re all stepping into,” she said.
She suggested temporary stabilization funding could help districts manage those transitions, although she said she was not aware of states currently using that approach in their consolidation plans.
Roza said the demographic shift presents a challenge for school leaders who have spent much of their careers managing growth rather than contraction.
“A lot of the leaders of these districts haven’t lived through a moment of contraction,” Roza said. “So it’s really demanding a new skill set from them that they haven’t practiced.”
Districts also face pressure to preserve academic programs, electives, athletics and other offerings while reducing the number of buildings and employees.
For communities watching enrollment fall, the debate increasingly involves more than whether a particular school building can remain open. Districts must weigh finances, transportation, academic programs, building conditions and the effect of closures on students and the neighborhoods those schools serve.
