The national trend of declining public school enrollment is being acutely felt in California where student numbers have declined for a decade, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
That decline accelerated sharply for the current school year.
The 1.3% drop in enrollment in 2025–26 was over 2.5 times larger than the average annual decline experienced over the past three years, the nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank
California's public schools, including charters, enroll 5.73 million students this year, down from 6.23 million a decade earlier, according to
State policymakers ought to pay careful attention to these trends, PPIC argues.
"Helping districts effectively adjust their budgets to not only reflect their lower enrollment counts, but also take advantage of greater resources per student should be a top priority for state education leaders," wrote Julien Lafortune, a PPIC senior fellow.
State per-pupil spending
The state's school districts have been
To the upside, falling enrollment under a robust state budget allows for higher per-student funding and new funding formula opportunities and may also compel new conversations about ways to strategically realign budgets to better support student needs, Lafortune said.
The downward enrollment trend was primarily driven by larger-than-expected declines across high school grades and slower growth in transitional kindergarten compared to projections, PPIC wrote.
"Declines have been substantial in many coastal regions, while the Central Valley has seen enrollment increase," Lafortune wrote. "All regions are projecting lower enrollment over the next decade."
"Roughly 62% of districts saw enrollment fall this past year," PPIC said. "Nearly all these districts saw drops of less than 5%, but the declines amounted to a significant number of students in larger districts."
The greater Los Angeles region has seen the most substantial decline — 16.5% since 2015 — and projects an 18.1% decrease over the next decade. Enrollment fell by roughly 4.5% in Los Angeles Unified School District, or nearly 17,000 fewer students.
Two-thirds of districts have experienced falling enrollment over the past decade, and over half have seen declines of more than 5%, he said. Nearly 40% have seen enrollment fall by more than 10%. Growth is less common, with 24% of districts growing more than 5% in the past decade, and 18% of districts growing more than 10%, according to PPIC's summary of the data.
Other coastal regions also project continued declines, though these are smaller in size.
Conversely, enrollment has grown significantly in much of the Central Valley, with the Sacramento metro region seeing the largest growth in the past decade, 8.8%, Lafortune wrote adding that projections imply this will not continue: no region expects enrollment growth over the coming decade.
"State policymakers ought to pay careful attention to these trends, which are not unique to California," Lafortune said.
"While many districts are still growing—and many more are declining at a slow to moderate pace—the enduring nature of most declines pose fiscal challenges to districts tasked with downsizing their budgets and facilities," he said. "Moreover, the longer-term projections suggest that the experience of falling enrollment will become more ubiquitous, though the size of these changes may vary."
Downsizing in an efficient and equitable fashion is a "considerable challenge," Lafortune wrote.
"Whether to close schools—and which ones—can be one of the most difficult and public decisions facing a district with falling enrollment," he wrote.
In addition to the challenge of closing schools, fiscal pressures to lower staff counts, consolidate program offerings, and reduce administrative overhead are still present whether or not a district chooses to close a school, he said.
