Declining enrollment has continued this school year, with total enrollment, including charter schools, down over 120 students when comparing Sept. 30, 2025, enrollment to Sept. 30, 2024, enrollment. The drop this year is fairly evenly split between charter schools and non-charter schools. This is the first year charter school enrollment has decreased since its inception in 2013-14.
As of December 2024, total non-charter school enrollment had dropped over 1,000 students or 8.0% since the end of the 2019-20 school year. During this time, staffing has increased by 86 FTE. Non-charter Elementary enrollment has declined the most, dropping approximately 1,755 students, or 25.47%, since 2019. This drop is due in part to a demographic shift (fewer births and an aging population), post-pandemic movement toward alternative education models, and the structural change of moving sixth-grade students to middle schools.
- In June 2019, only 3 elementary schools had fewer than 400 students.
- As of December 2024, only 3 schools had more than 400 students, with average enrollment per elementary school falling from over 450 to 342 students.
This decline has made it increasingly challenging to maintain comprehensive services at each site without relying on blended-grade classrooms, which have remained steady at 5 for the current year.
Based on actual birth rates for the last five years, we anticipate district non-charter enrollment to continue to drop for at least another five years. We have engaged a professional demographer to update the District enrollment forecast to verify this expectation.
