Texas’ public school enrollment declined by more than 76,000 students at the beginning of the current school year, according to a new report by the education advocacy group Texas 2036.
The decline is the largest single-year drop in public school enrollment the state has seen in modern history outside of the COVID-19 pandemic. The enrollment decline comes despite rapid population growth in the state.
But an education demographics expert warned state lawmakers Monday that next year’s numbers could be even more dire for local school districts. Bob Templeton, a consultant with Austin-based STRIVE Public Policy Resources, said during an interim hearing of the Texas House Committee on Public Education that he expects public school enrollment to decline by more than 120,000 students for the 2027-28 school year.
“It’s a conservative estimate,” he said. “It’s a hopeful estimate. It’s at least that, but I think there’s a strong likelihood it could be above that.”
The Texas 2036 report points to three main factors driving the drop: declining birth rates, shifting migration patterns and increased competition from private schools and homeschooling.
The report’s authors project the decline to continue in the coming years. They note that the Texas Demographic Center predicts the share of people younger than 18 will decline to 18% in 2060 from 25% in 2020.
For years, traditional public schools have had to contend with increased competition from charter schools, which are publicly funded but operate independently of local school districts. But the report notes that although charter school enrollment is continuing to expand, growth has moderated over the past few years. At the beginning of the current school year, Texas’ charter school enrollment grew by 2.4%, the smallest gain in enrollment the charter sector has seen in at least nine years. At the same time, the state’s independent school districts lost about 1.7% of their enrollment.
Public schools face another source of competition in the coming years as the state’s new Texas Education Freedom Account program comes online.
The Texas Comptroller’s Office has awarded education savings account money to nearly 100,000 students. Award recipients may use that money to pay for educational expenses such as private school tuition and homeschooling costs. Although most of this year’s recipients were already enrolled in private schools, public education advocates worry the program could further drive down public school enrollment if it expands, as similar programs in other states have done.
Templeton, the education consultant, said the biggest factor driving public school enrollment losses is the growth in the number of families choosing another option for their kids’ education. He expects the new school choice program will cause that trend to accelerate, but it’s a trend that predates the new policy, he said.
As an example, Templeton pointed to rapid growth in homeschooling since the pandemic. No Texas agency tracks the number of students in homeschooling, so exact numbers are hard to pin down. But numbers from the Texas Home School Coalition suggest homeschooling makes up a relatively small, but fast-growing segment of the state’s education landscape.
Templeton said growth in homeschooling is part of a larger shift in how families live. After the pandemic, more parents began working from home, which gave them more flexibility to set their own working arrangements. During interviews with families, Templeton and his team learned that many of them had opted for homeschooling because they wanted the same flexibility in their kids’ education. Homeschooling allowed them to set their kids’ school schedules from week to week, he said.
State education leaders have predicted continued enrollment declines for years. But during Monday’s committee meeting, Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath told members of the Texas House Committee on Public Education that the enrollment losses districts saw this year were “somewhat more accelerated” than expected.
There are several cost-cutting strategies districts can adopt when faced with declining enrollment, Morath said. Many districts don’t back-fill vacant positions because they need fewer teachers, he said. That can sometimes work to students’ benefit, he said — if districts don’t need as many teachers, they can afford to be choosier about who they hire, making it more likely all students will get an effective teacher.
But in many cases, declining enrollment eventually leads to campus closures, Morath said. Morath, who served on Dallas ISD’s Board of Trustees in 2012 when the board voted to close 11 schools, acknowledged closing campuses is a hard choice for districts to make.
“Those are very difficult decisions that have to be made to preserve the financial integrity of the school, to make sure there’s sufficient resources that can be provided to the remaining students,” he said.
The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.
The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, Judy and Jim Gibbs, The Meadows Foundation, The Murrell Foundation, Ron Steinhart, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Sydney Smith Hicks, and the University of Texas at Dallas. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.