California School Enrollment Decline: Causes, Closures, and Layoffs

California’s public school enrollment declined by roughly 75,000 students in the 2025-26 school year, a 1.3% drop that brought the state down to about 5.7 million children in its public schools. It was the steepest single-year loss since the pandemic and about seven times larger than what state finance officials had predicted only months earlier. The forces behind it are demographic and economic: falling birth rates, a sharp drop in international migration, fear tied to federal immigration enforcement, and families continuing to leave the state’s most expensive regions.¹

How Big the Drop Is

The 2025-26 loss was 74,961 students. The California Department of Finance had projected a decline of about 10,000, or 0.2%. The actual figure was 1.3%.¹

This is the eighth consecutive year of decline. Enrollment peaked at just over 6.3 million in 2004 and has fallen since, with a brief plateau in the late 2010s before the pandemic accelerated the trend. Since 2019-20 alone, California has lost about 300,000 public school students. Nationally, K-12 enrollment has fallen 2.3% over five years, and federal projections point to another 2.7 million students lost across the country by 2031-32.¹²

Why California Is Losing Students

Fewer Babies Being Born

The most fundamental driver is demographic. California’s birth rate has declined for years, accelerating after the 2008 recession, and it has not reversed. Researchers describe a “birth dearth” in which births fall short of what would replace the existing population. Each smaller cohort eventually arrives at kindergarten five years later. State officials consistently identify falling births as the single most important long-term cause of enrollment loss.³²

A Collapse in International Migration

The 2025-26 drop was so much steeper than predicted largely because international migration to California fell off a cliff. U.S. Census data show net international migration to the state fell from 312,761 in 2024 to 109,278 in 2025, a decline of roughly two-thirds. Fewer arrivals means fewer school-age children entering the system.¹

Fear of Immigration Enforcement

Beyond the raw numbers, fear generated by federal immigration enforcement has kept families away from schools. Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Alberto Carvalho attributed enrollment losses to a “climate of fear and instability created by the ongoing immigration crackdowns,” noting that some families had chosen to leave the state or the country. H.D. Palmer, deputy director of the California Department of Finance, acknowledged that “a portion of the enrollment loss is driven by current immigration enforcement activities.”⁴¹

Housing Costs and Outmigration

Housing costs continue to push families with children out of California, or toward its cheaper interior. The enrollment data makes this visible: expensive coastal areas are losing students fastest, while lower-cost counties are among the few places gaining. San Joaquin County added 842 students, Placer County 841, and Sutter County 802. Elizabeth Sanders of the California Department of Education put it plainly: “We’re seeing a direct correlation between economies that are livable for families and where students are enrolling in school.”¹

The greater Los Angeles region has lost 15% of its enrollment over the past decade and is projected to lose another 19% by the early 2030s. The Bay Area is down 8% and is projected to shed 14% more by 2033, both outpacing the statewide projection of 12%. Lower-cost states like Florida and Texas are projected to gain enrollment as California loses it.⁵²

Private Schools and Homeschooling Are a Small Part of It

The shift to private schools and homeschools is real but modest. Between 2019-20 and 2022-23, about 12% of the public school loss came from families switching to those alternatives. Homeschool enrollment jumped from 39,000 to 59,000 during the first pandemic year and has since moderated. And in 2025-26, private schools saw a 6.6% enrollment drop of their own and homeschools fell 3.7%. This latest wave is not about families choosing alternatives. It’s about fewer children being in California at all.⁶¹

Where the Losses Are Concentrated

Los Angeles County alone accounts for 43% of the state’s total enrollment loss, shedding nearly 33,000 students in a single year. Hispanic student enrollment dropped by 48,064 (1.48%), white student enrollment fell by 31,076 (2.68%), and the number of English learners declined by 8.2%.¹

Counties with higher shares of English learners, Black, Latino, and Asian students are experiencing steeper losses. Counties in the top quartile for English learner enrollment are projected to see a 13% decline over the next decade, while counties with the smallest shares of English learners are projected to see slight growth.²

Black students have been disproportionately affected, both by the decline itself and by the school closures it triggers. Black student enrollment fell 47% between 2003 and 2023, from 510,000 to about 273,000. Black students make up 5% of the state’s student population but accounted for nearly 14% of students in schools closed between 2012 and 2021. After controlling for achievement, poverty, charter status, and enrollment trends, the odds of a school closing increase by nearly 25% for every 10-percentage-point increase in the share of Black students.⁷

Los Angeles Unified as the Sharpest Example

LAUSD enrollment fell about 4% in 2025-26, to 392,654 students, a drop of roughly 16,400. That figure was 7,000 students worse than the district’s own projections.⁸⁹

Enrollment among “newcomer” students, defined by LAUSD as non-U.S.-born English learners in American schools for three years or fewer, fell particularly hard. Of 18,232 expected to return in fall 2025, only 16,668 did, a shortfall of about 8.5%. Educators at schools like Roybal Learning Center, which had at least 200 fewer students than expected, reported families staying home out of fear of ICE activity.¹⁰

Reports from South Los Angeles described ICE raids at a clinic, an auto parts store, and a park near 93rd Street Elementary. DHS officers reportedly attempted to enter elementary schools under false pretenses, and a high school student with a disability was apprehended while enrolling for classes in what appeared to be a case of mistaken identity. The district responded by deploying attendance counselors for welfare checks and home visits, running a hotline and a “know-your-rights” website, and in some cases picking students up by bus at their homes. At 93rd Street Elementary, hiring two attendance counselors helped raise enrollment from about 480 in August to 740 by October.⁹⁸

Since 2002-03, LAUSD has lost more than 316,000 students, about 40% of its total. The district loses roughly $60 million in state revenue for every one-percentage-point drop in average daily attendance.¹¹

What It Means: Closures and Layoffs

Falling enrollment eventually forces districts to close or consolidate schools. Between 2012 and 2021, nearly 700 California schools closed, displacing roughly 167,000 students.⁷

Recent rounds show the pattern. San Jose Unified approved closure of five elementary schools in March 2026 after losing 20% of its enrollment since 2017; all five are Title I schools, and between 72% and 91% of students at four of them identified as Hispanic or Latino, against a districtwide average of 55.2%. Parents filed a complaint alleging the process was “procedurally deficient” and “rushed.”¹²¹³¹⁴ Oakland Unified, facing a $100 million gap for 2026-27, had a 2022 closure plan rescinded after the California Department of Justice concluded it would disproportionately harm Black, low-income, and special education students.¹⁵

Staff cuts have followed. Ahead of 2025-26, 1,246 certificated staff, including teachers, nurses, counselors, psychologists, and librarians, were laid off across 92 California school districts. The California Teachers Association attributed the layoffs to both declining enrollment and the expiration of federal pandemic relief funds. Santa Ana Unified laid off 262 staff members. Pajaro Valley Unified moved to eliminate 160 full-time positions. Monterey County’s 24 districts reported a combined $107.4 million deficit for the year.¹⁶¹⁷

Why the Money Problem Is Structural

California funds schools primarily through the Local Control Funding Formula, which pays out based on average daily attendance rather than enrollment. California is one of only five states that ties school funding to attendance. When students stop showing up, revenue drops that day; when enrollment falls permanently, the revenue loss is structural.¹⁸

The state offers a one-year cushion, the “declining enrollment adjustment,” letting districts use prior-year attendance figures for one year after a decline. It spent $925 million on those adjustments in 2018-19, and the figure has grown. A three-year rolling average for LCFF calculations further softens the blow.¹⁹¹⁸

Even so, districts can’t cut costs as fast as revenue falls. Salaries and benefits are the largest expense, and layoffs tend to leave districts with more experienced, higher-paid teachers. Facilities, maintenance, and debt service don’t shrink with enrollment. Proposition 98’s minimum funding guarantee provides a partial offset (roughly $100 per student per year in additional funding, by the Legislative Analyst’s Office estimate) but that’s modest against the scale of loss.²⁰

What the State Has Done About It

Legislative responses so far have been limited. Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains introduced AB 1348 to add “immigration enforcement activity” to the emergencies that qualify districts for funding credits when attendance drops by 10% or more. Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill in October 2025, saying existing law already provides ways for districts to recover lost funding and that the bill lacked safeguards to ensure absent students could study elsewhere.²¹

SB 98, enacted in 2024, directed the LAO to study switching school funding from attendance to enrollment. Its January 2026 report estimated the switch would cost about $5.7 billion annually for LCFF and $800 million for other programs, and recommended against the change, warning it would likely have “adverse effects on attendance” by removing the fiscal incentive to get students to school.²²

On the equity side, AB 1912, signed in 2022, requires districts in fiscal distress to conduct an equity impact analysis before closing or consolidating schools. In April 2023, Attorney General Rob Bonta issued guidance emphasizing that closure decisions must comply with federal and state civil rights laws. Its reach is narrow so far: it has been formally invoked only in Oakland Unified and Inglewood Unified, the two districts meeting the “fiscal distress” trigger.²³²⁴

Transitional Kindergarten Is Cushioning the Fall

One partial offset is transitional kindergarten, which California has been expanding to cover all 4-year-olds. TK enrollment grew 20.1% in 2025-26 and now accounts for 3.72% of all state enrollment, serving about half the state’s 4-year-olds. Without TK, the overall decline since 2012-13 would have been 11.39% instead of 7.96%. For 2025-26 specifically, the decline would have been 1.97% rather than 1.29%. TK adds students at the front end of the pipeline, but it does not reverse the underlying trend of fewer children statewide.²⁵

What Comes Next

The California Department of Finance projects enrollment will fall below 5.2 million by 2032 and below 5 million by the late 2030s, with declines persisting every year through at least 2044-45. Federal projections from the National Center for Education Statistics are more pessimistic, putting California below 5 million students by 2031. If these projections hold, the state’s student population will have shrunk 15 to 20% from its pre-pandemic levels.²

Nearly three-quarters of California school districts have already seen enrollment declines over the past five years, and only the Sierra and Northern Central Valley regions are projected to grow. The system was built around the assumption of a large and growing student population. The question ahead is how to run it with fewer students, fewer dollars, and the political difficulty of deciding which schools to keep open.

1
EdSource. Declining School Enrollment California
2
Public Policy Institute of California. Factors and Future Projections for K-12 Declining Enrollment
3
EdSurge. Lower Birth Rates Could Cause Enrollment Issues for Schools
4
ABC7 News. California Public School Enrollment Drops 75K Students
5
Getting Down to Facts. Bay Area School Enrollment Plunges as Families Flee High-Cost Region
6
Public Policy Institute of California. Private Schooling Played a Small Role in Declining Public School Enrollment
7
Getting Down to Facts. Declining Enrollment, School Closures, and Equity Considerations
8
LA Public Press. LA School Enrollment, ICE, and Immigrant Kids
9
K-12 Dive. Districts Report Enrollment Drops Amid Immigration Raids
10
Los Angeles Times. School Enrollment Plummets in LAUSD Amid Immigration Raids
11
The 74. Enrollment Is Falling – California Leaders Must Ensure Students Don’t Lose Out
12
KQED. Alleging Discrimination, San Jose Parents Try to Fight School Closures
13
ABC7 News. SFUSD Set to Release List of Schools That Meet Criteria for Closure or Merger
14
San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education. Strong Schools Resolution
15
Oakland Attorney General Letter. Letter to Oakland Unified Re Potential Closures
16
K-12 Dive. Over 1,200 California K-12 Staff Laid Off So Far Before the New School Year
17
Monterey County Now. As Enrollment Declines, Local Schools Are Slashing Budgets and Laying Off Staff
18
Legislative Analyst’s Office. Assessing a Shift to Enrollment-Based School Funding
19
Public Policy Institute of California. Declining Enrollment in California Schools – Fiscal Challenges and Opportunities
20
Public Policy Institute of California. Declining Enrollment in California Schools – Fiscal Challenges and Opportunities
21
Politico Pro. Newsom Vetoes Bill Helping Schools That Lose Students to Immigration Raids
22
Legislative Analyst’s Office. Assessing a Shift to Enrollment-Based School Funding
23
California Department of Education. School Closure Resources
24
The Oaklandside. Attorney General, Oakland School Closures, and AB 1912
25
EdSource. California Transitional Kindergarten Quality