When the Atlanta Public Schools announced last year that it would close 16 schools with declining enrollment, district buildings weren’t the only ones on the list. The plans to “repurpose” facilities swept up two KIPP charters, Soul Primary and Soul Academy, which shared a campus in a predominantly Black community on the west side.
Affected district families have until the end of this school year to say their goodbyes and make plans for the fall of 2027. But for the two KIPP sites, the end came quickly. The schools closed in June.
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“As a child, one of the pillars of your life is the school ,” said Meeyah Yehuda, whose daughter attends another KIPP school in the city. She worries that the closure will “set a precedent where it’s acceptable to destabilize a community.”
Northeast of downtown, families at a small private school for high achievers had even less time. It abruptly shut down in April, and in a letter to families, board members suggested that theirs wasn’t the only independent school struggling to survive. Applications at private schools are down more than 20% across the city, they wrote.
In a state where the fertility rate fell 17% between 2007 and 2023, the Georgia capital is a snapshot of how district, charter and private schools are all feeling the impact of fewer children entering school. The drop, similar to the national average, is significantly greater in other states. In New Mexico, for example, nearly 32% fewer children will enter kindergarten in 2028, according to a recent analysis from ExcelinEd, a nonprofit that supports private school choice. Illinois is close behind with a 31% drop, and in California, there were 29% — or 166,306 — fewer births over that time period. While public school advocates often blame choice programs, like charters, for luring away district families, there are signs that the impact of low birth rates has hit choice schools as well.
“Choice cannot be the scapegoat,” said Cara Candal, vice president of policy at ExcelinEd, a think tank founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. “There just aren’t enough kids.”
As board chair of a private Montessori school in Newton, Massachusetts, she has witnessed firsthand the spread of empty seats. A couple years ago, school leaders looked at her and said, “Where are all the 3-year-olds?” she said. Candal looked back and said, “They’re not coming.”
‘Skeleton services’
District schools are still experiencing the most extreme effects of the fertility decline. For some, that means cutting back on personnel. An August jobs report from the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that public school staffing nationally has dropped by about 29,000 employees over last year.
“This could be a sign that districts are cutting central staffing as one cost-cutting measure ahead of school consolidations,” said Brian Eschbacher, an enrollment consultant. “It’s almost always more politically palatable to save $1 million by cutting 10 central office staffers than to try to save $1 million by consolidating a school.”
In response to community backlash, many districts dipped into pandemic relief funds to delay or cancel plans to shutter schools. But federal data shows that closures are up from 755 in 2021-22 to more than 1,000 last year.
Atlanta’s Finch Elementary, southwest of downtown, is among those that will close, leaving parents like Hazel Smith wondering what comes next.
She appreciates that she can walk her son Legendary — a name she says came to her in a dream — to school. It’s a route she took when she went there as a child. Four of her other kids also attended Finch. Five-year-old Legendary has some developmental delays and can act “aimless” at times. She takes comfort in knowing he’ll see someone in the building he recognizes. But she doesn’t know if that will be the case next year when Finch consolidates with another school and moves to a new location that’s not within walking distance.
“Familiarity for me is a big thing. I know the teachers, I know the principal. The school is very close,” she said. “Now he’s going to go through it again.”
Atlanta is one of 14 urban districts that plan to close a combined total of nearly 150 schools this year, according to a K-12 Dive tracker. At California’s Oakland Unified School District, 60 principals penned a letter to the school board in April asking them to close schools.
“We cannot maintain the current structure and operate 81 schools with skeleton services for young people and their families,” the letter said.
The Los Angeles Unified School District, where enrollment is roughly half what it was two decades ago, is beginning to discuss closures. Too many elementary principals are a “one-man show,” said Maria Nichols, head of the district’s principals union. Because they don’t have enough enrollment to earn full-time support staffers, they share professionals like mental health counselors with other sites.
“Maybe you get a half-time school psychologist. You have quarter people, half people,” she said. “If you only have a psychiatric social worker on a Monday, hopefully your crisis is on a Monday. If it’s on a Wednesday, you’re alone.”
‘Never seen it this bad’
For public school parents, it can be painful to hear that their neighborhood schools might close even as charters are moving in. That’s what happened earlier this year when Success Academy, a New York-based charter network, announced that it was opening schools in five Miami high schools with dwindling enrollment even as the Miami-Dade school board was voting to close nine schools.
“The charter schools are siphoning kids off the public schools,” said Lissette Fernandez, co-founder of Moms for Libros, an advocacy group. “We’re basically fighting for our lives.”
New Superintendent Rafael Villalobos has paused the closures, but early counts show enrollment is still down by at least 15,000 students. The loss is most pronounced in the early grades, especially kindergarten.
“I’ve never seen it this bad,” said Fernandez, whose daughter attends Snapper Creek Elementary. The school, with a total kindergarten enrollment of 34 students, is serving about half the number of students it was built for.
Multiple districts across the country, including Jefferson County in Colorado and Fort Bend in Texas have recently reported record-low kindergarten classes. An analysis of enrollment trends from the University of Virginia shows that in that state, class sizes in the early grades have decreased every year since 2021.
Texas, California, Wisconsin
For years, charters have been exceptions to the enrollment decline trend. During the pandemic, they experienced record-setting growth while the numbers in district schools plummeted. Charters were quicker to offer consistent, virtual instruction than districts during lockdowns, research shows. Other parents flocked to online charter schools, which provided the flexibility that many families wanted.
A forthcoming report from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools will show that charter enrollment still grew over 1% between 2024-25 and 2025-26.
But anecdotally, the narrative is more mixed.
As five Success Academy charters move into Miami, four charters across the state in Hillsborough County voluntarily closed in August, in part because of low enrollment. Fifteen charter schools in Denver have closed in recent years, Chalkbeat reported, and in the District of Columbia, where roughly half of students attend charters, four have closed since 2024.
Along with the two in Atlanta, the KIPP network closed seven schools in Texas. Charters in the state continue to gain students overall, but the pace has slowed, from about 20,000 students per year before the pandemic to 10,600 students in 2025-26, according to a May report from Texas 2036, a nonprofit focused on state policy.
Overall, Texas public schools had 76,000 fewer K-12 students last year, representing the first enrollment decline, apart from the pandemic, in close to 40 years, the report said.
A sharp decline in the immigrant population because of the Trump administration’s enforcement actions partially explains the enrollment shifts in Texas schools, but the impact of lower birth rates is “now exposed,” said Bob Templeton, senior consultant and managing director at Strive Public Policy Resources, a consulting organization.
“We thought our millennial kids, when they got to their 30s, were going to have two or three kids. Well, they’re not,” he said. Bob Templeton, senior consultant and managing director at Strive Public Policy Resources, a consulting organization.
The decline “feels extreme now, but it’s really not extreme to the level that it’s going to be in about 15-20 years.”
In California, where the population has stagnated, charter enrollment dropped .3% last year, according to state data. That’s far less than the rates for district (down 1.4%) and private (down 6.6%) schools. But the decrease has led to scenes like one in Orange County in July.
With children at their sides, parents from Explore Academy pleaded with the county’s board of education not to revoke the school’s charter.
“This is about more than a charter. It is about our children, families and a community that has found a place to belong,” Lili Gonzalez, a parent and a staff member at the school, told the board. “Please consider the students whose lives are being shaped by the school and the families who choose Explore because it meets their children’s needs.”
But the school lacked enough students for long-term fiscal stability, said Aracely Chastain, executive director of the county’s charter schools unit. The school projected 122 students for 2025-26, but in reality, had 73. The board voted unanimously to pull the charter.
Wisconsin is another state where the decline in birth rates is hitting the non-traditional sector.
An analysis of enrollment data across education sectors shows that most of Wisconsin’s 72 counties lost students between 2025 to 2026. But that doesn’t mean those students are departing for charter and private schools, said Quinton Klabon, senior research director at the Institute for Reforming Government, a right-leaning think tank.
“In nearly every county, district enrollment loss does not correspond with the change in charter or private enrollment. If anything, it corresponds with increases in home school numbers, especially in rural counties,” he said. District numbers fell by 14,600 students, while charter and private gained a combined 600 students and homeschooling increased by 1,800. “Overall, Wisconsin simply suffers from too few families moving in and too few children being born.”
While overall charter enrollment is not yet on the decline, a recent small survey from the conservative American Enterprise Institute shows that nearly half of charter leaders in Arizona, Florida and Utah have seen enrollment loss due to the growth of education savings accounts in those states. Just like district parents blame charters for the loss of their neighborhood schools, charters in some states now point to ESAs as the source of their enrollment decline.
‘A sinking tide’
School choice programs, like Texas’ new Education Freedom Accounts, are initially a boon to the private sector. Reports show some Catholic schools in the state have picked up 400 to 600 students because of the program.
But across the country, some private schools, especially in states without vouchers and ESAs, have struggled to stay open. A spring report from the National Association of Independent Schools showed that while median enrollment held steady last school year, smaller private schools, with around 100 kids or less, are experiencing “acute enrollment challenges.”
Over time, participation in ESA programs will likely peak as well, said Zach Milne, senior economist and research analyst at Common Sense Institute Arizona, a conservative think tank.
“Eventually this demographic shift is going to bite for everybody,” he said. “It’s a sinking tide that’s lowering all boats, to use a reverse analogy.”