America’s public schools are closing again, at a pace of more than 1,000 a year, and public school enrollment is shrinking in 40 states. The system has lost 1.4 million students since 2019, and the babies who would have refilled those classrooms were never born.
Closures topped 1,000 in the most recent complete school year for the first time since 2019-20, and provisional data shows the pace holding.
Enrollment sits below its fall-2019 level in 40 states. Eight states plus Washington DC have more students now, and Florida and Utah held flat.
Births have fallen 15.9 percent since their 2007 peak, and North Dakota is the only state with more babies now than then.
Texas gained students through fall 2024 in federal data, then lost 76,613 students in state data the very next year.
A closed school takes nearby home values down with it. Studies put the hit at roughly 7 to 13 percent.
Here is what the numbers show, state by state, and what a closure does to your block.
How many schools are closing in the US?
America closed 1,011 public schools in the 2024-25 school year, and provisional federal data counts 1,019 more closures for 2025-26.[11] That is about 1 in every 100 public schools, gone in a year. The last time closures topped 1,000 was 2019-20.
US public school closures per school year: the official NCES series through 2021-22, then our computation from the same federal CCD files. The 2025-26 bar is a preliminary federal file and typically revises upward.
1,74110-11
1,69211-12
1,39412-13
1,64413-14
1,33614-15
1,07015-16
1,06816-17
1,31017-18
1,12218-19
1,13019-20
86520-21
75521-22
80722-23
91623-24
1,01124-25
1,019p25-26
Source: NCES Digest table 216.95 (2010-11 to 2021-22); computed from NCES CCD school directory files (2022-23 on), same closure definition, validated against the published 755.
Closures are not new. Schools closed at a clip of 1,000 to 1,700 a year through the 2010s, when recession budgets and charter churn did the closing. Then federal pandemic relief froze the process, and closures fell to 755 in 2021-22, the lowest on record.
That money is gone. Closures have climbed every year since, from 807 to 916 to 1,011 to a provisional 1,019, and this time the driver is emptier classrooms rather than emptier budgets. The pattern holds when you count only regular schools and set aside special-education and alternative programs.
The district lists are already long: Cleveland approved 29 closures, Philadelphia 17, and St. Louis is weighing plans to close up to 22 of its 62 schools, per district actions tracked by K-12 Dive.[9]
Which states are losing the most students?
West Virginia has lost more of its students than any state over the past decade, down 13.6 percent. Mississippi lost 12.0 percent, New Hampshire 11.1 percent, and Illinois 10.1 percent. That is about one student in seven gone from West Virginia’s classrooms in ten years.
The recent losses pile up in three big states. New York, California, and Illinois account for 43.8 percent of the national decline since 2019. The gainers are mostly Sun Belt and Plains states: Alabama, Delaware, Idaho, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Texas, plus Washington DC.
Map: public school enrollment change by state, fall 2019 to fall 2024, ranked steepest decline (darkest, West Virginia at -8.1%) to biggest gain (Washington DC at +4.8%). Source: NCES.Schools closed per state across the last six school years, from Hawaii’s 1 to Texas’s 546 (darkest). All school types; 2025-26 provisional.
Source: NCES Digest of Education Statistics table 203.20; NCES Common Core of Data directory files.
School closures and enrollment decline in every state
The table below puts the whole picture in one place: how each state’s enrollment has moved, what the government projects by 2031, how many schools each state closed over the last six school years, and how far births have fallen since 2007.
Public school enrollment by state, with school closures, projections, and births. Enrollment is NCES fall 2024; the change columns are fall 2019 to fall 2024 and the decade fall 2014 to fall 2024; the projection is NCES, fall 2022 to fall 2031; closures span the six school years 2020-21 through 2025-26, all school types (*2025-26 is a preliminary federal file); births compare the 2007 and 2024 finals. Click a header to sort.
Texas closed the most schools over the past six school years at 546, with California at 387 and Ohio at 330. Minnesota’s 379 ranks high partly because its count includes many small program sites, not just regular neighborhood schools. Washington is the state to watch: it closed 70 schools in provisional 2025-26 data after averaging about 20 a year, and every single state closed at least one school that year.
Then there is Hawaii. It faces the steepest projected enrollment drop in the country, 16.0 percent by 2031, and it has closed exactly one school in six years. The reckoning there has not started.
Why are schools closing?
Start with births. The US recorded 4,316,233 births in 2007 and 3,628,934 in 2024, a drop of 15.9 percent, and a smaller kindergarten class arrives five years after every drop in births.[12] Only one state had more births at the end of that stretch than the start. North Dakota, up 9.0 percent.
Births by state, change from the 2007 national peak to the newest final year: the national drop, the only state that gained, and the four steepest declines.
United States-15.9%
North Dakota+9.0%
Illinois-30.5%
New Mexico-30.3%
California-29.0%
Mississippi-28.0%
Source: CDC/NCHS National Vital Statistics Reports, final births for 2007 and 2024.
Immigration papered over the gap in the states that kept growing. But that cushion is thinning, and California’s experience shows how fast: state officials tie part of their new enrollment drop to immigration losses, and census figures show immigration to California fell from 312,761 to 109,278 in a single year.[3]
The rest is choice. Families have shifted toward private schools, homeschooling, and charters, so public enrollment falls faster than the child population. Money follows the students out the door, and a district with fixed building costs and fewer students eventually runs out of options. Among roughly 9,300 districts analyzed in Bellwether’s Systems Under Strain report from August 2025, 68 percent lost enrollment over four years, and the median declining district lost about 1.5 million dollars in revenue and 25 students per school, about one full classroom.[4]
Is Texas still gaining students?
Not anymore. Federal data runs through fall 2024 and shows Texas up 50,242 students since 2019, one of just eight states that grew. Then the state’s own numbers came in: Texas lost 76,613 students in 2025-26, according to TEA enrollment data analyzed by the nonprofit Texas 2036 in May 2026, the second-largest single-year drop in the 40 years the state has tracked enrollment.[2]
Two states, two data vintages.
Texasfederal data: +50,242 students, fall 2019 to fall 2024. State data: -76,613 in 2025-26the flip arrived one vintage after the federal count
Californiathe viral “-160,000 in a year” matches the fall-2020 crash (-184,501). Latest federal year: -26,227; state 2025-26: -74,961old crash, current label
Source: NCES table 203.20; TEA data via Texas 2036; CDE Census Day data via EdSource.
California tells the same story with an extra twist. You may have seen a claim that California lost over 160,000 students in a single year. That number matches the fall-2020 pandemic crash, when the state lost 184,501 students, not anything current. The real figures: down 26,227 in the latest federal year, and down 74,961 in the state’s own 2025-26 count, per California Department of Education Census Day data reported by EdSource.[3] California’s education department also noted that all 39 states that had released 2025-26 enrollment data showed declines.[3]
How many students will public schools have by 2031?
The federal projection says 46.9 million, down from a peak of 50.8 million in 2019. That is a loss of nearly 4 million students, or 7.6 percent, and the projections have enrollment falling in 40 states plus Washington DC through 2030-31.[1] Hawaii, California, New Mexico, and New York face the steepest projected drops, all above 13 percent. If you live in one of those states, the shrinking has barely started.
US public school enrollment: peak, now, projected.
50.8Mfall 2019, the all-time peak50,796,445 students
49.4Mfall 2024, the newest federal count49,387,403 students
46.9Mprojected for fall 203146,889,600 in the NCES projection
The model projected 48,707,400 for fall 2024; the actual came in 680,003 higher. Source: NCES Digest table 203.20, 2025 and 2023 editions.
Take the projections as direction, not destiny. The model expected fall 2024 enrollment of about 48.7 million, and the actual figure came in roughly 680,000 students higher, largely because immigration ran hotter than the model assumed. A Bellwether and WestEd analysis from June 2026 puts the cost of the projected decline at 11.5 billion dollars a year in state education revenues by 2030-31.[5]
What does a school closure do to home values?
It hits them hard. A neighborhood school adds 6.8 to 7.2 percent to the value of homes in its attendance zone, about 9,000 dollars at the average price in the one clean natural experiment on the question, an Iowa school that closed for budget reasons even though its test scores were fine.[6] Studies of what happens after closure put the damage at roughly 7 to 13 percent, and a 2021 Michigan State University dissertation found an average 13 percent drop in nearby property values, with a range of 3 to 25 percent depending on what happened to the building.[7]
The housing math of one school closure.
+6.8%what a neighborhood school adds to home values in its attendance zoneIowa natural experiment, up to 7.2%
-13%average nearby property-value drop after a closurerange -3% to -25%, set by what happens to the building
<$1Mtypical net yearly saving for the district per closed buildingPew, 12-district study
Sources: Journal of Housing Research (2017); Michigan State University dissertation (2021); Pew Charitable Trusts via Research for Action.
Now weigh that against what the district saves. Net operating savings from closing one building typically run under 1 million dollars a year, because security, maintenance, and insurance on the empty shell eat the rest, per a Pew Charitable Trusts study of 12 big districts.[8] So the neighborhood absorbs the wealth hit, and the district banks less than a million a year. Houston’s school district even lists a shortage of affordable housing among the reasons its enrollment fell.[9]
Empty buildings are the swing factor. The Pew study found 301 closed school properties still sitting unused across those districts, and the Michigan State research found the worst home-value outcomes where buildings sat vacant or went to buyers who shut the community out.[7][8] So the question for your block is not just whether the school closes, but what moves in afterward.
Methodology: where these numbers come from
Enrollment figures come from the National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics table 203.20, which reports public school enrollment by state through fall 2024, the most recent federal vintage. State projections through fall 2031 come from the 2023 edition of the same table, the last edition to carry NCES projection columns. Births come from the CDC’s National Vital Statistics Reports for 2007, the peak year, and 2024, the newest final data.
We computed school closures from the NCES Common Core of Data school directory files. A school counts as closed in the school year by which it no longer operated, if it was operating the year before. That method reproduces NCES’s own published count for 2021-22, 755 closures, exactly, including its breakdown of 571 regular schools. The federal government stopped updating its closure table after that year, so the 2022-23 through 2025-26 figures are our own computation from the same federal files, and the 2025-26 file is a preliminary release whose counts typically revise upward.
Three limits worth knowing. A closed school is not always a shuttered building, since schools can merge or share space. Closure counts include special-education, alternative, and vocational schools, which is why Minnesota’s total looks outsized. And state totals from Texas and California for 2025-26 come from state education agencies, one year ahead of the federal data, so the two vintages are labeled wherever they appear together.
Enrollment: NCES Digest table 203.20, per state, fall 1990 through fall 2024
Projections: NCES Digest table 203.20 (2023 edition), fall 2022 to fall 2031
Closures: computed from CCD directory files, validated against the published 755 for 2021-22
Births: CDC/NCHS final data, 2007 vs 2024
2025-26 state enrollment: TEA and CDE state data, labeled as such
The bottom line
Public schools are closing at the fastest pace since the pandemic, and the enrollment math says the pace will not slow soon. Births are down 15.9 percent from their peak, 40 states have fewer students than they did in 2019, and the federal projection keeps enrollment falling through 2031.
If a school near you sits half-empty, pay attention. The research says your home’s value is tied to what happens to that building. The district saves less than you might think, and the neighborhood pays more.
Frequently asked questions
What states have declining public school enrollment?
Forty states have declining public school enrollment compared with fall 2019, per federal data through fall 2024. West Virginia leads the decade decline at 13.6 percent, followed by Mississippi at 12.0 percent and New Hampshire at 11.1 percent. Only eight states grew over the five-year window: Alabama, Delaware, Idaho, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Texas, plus Washington DC, while Florida and Utah held flat.
How many schools are in the US in 2026?
About 99,000 public schools are operating in the US, based on the federal Common Core of Data school directory for the most recent school year. Higher counts that circulate online fold in private schools and other school types alongside public ones, so the universe matters when you compare counts.
How many students are in US public schools?
US public schools enroll about 49.4 million students, 49,387,403 in the newest federal count. That is down from the peak of 50,796,445 in fall 2019, a loss of 1.4 million students in five years. Federal projections put enrollment at 46.9 million by 2031.
Do school closures affect property values?
Yes, school closures lower nearby property values by roughly 7 to 13 percent in published research. A 2021 Michigan State University dissertation measured an average drop of 13 percent, ranging from 3 to 25 percent depending on how the building was reused. An Iowa study found a neighborhood school added 6.8 to 7.2 percent to home values in its attendance zone, value that disappears when it closes.
Why would a district close a good school?
Districts close good schools because closures are enrollment and budget events, not performance verdicts. Funding follows students out the door while building costs stay fixed, so a shrinking school can run out of money with fine test scores. The Iowa school researchers used to measure a school’s neighborhood value closed for budget reasons, not quality.
Rosburg, A., Isakson, H., Ecker, M., and Strauss, T. “Beyond Standardized Test Scores: The Impact of a Public School Closure on House Prices.” Journal of Housing Research 26(2), 2017. ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rjrhxx/v26y2017i2p119-135.html
Michigan State University. “The Community Consequences of School Closure and Reuse.” Doctoral dissertation, 2021. d.lib.msu.edu/etd/49756
National Center for Education Statistics. “Common Core of Data, Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey directory files,” school years 2019-20 through 2025-26 (preliminary). nces.ed.gov/ccd/files.asp
National Center for Education Statistics. “Digest of Education Statistics, Table 216.95: Number and enrollment of public elementary and secondary schools that have closed.” 2022 edition. nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d22/tables/dt22_216.95.asp
Chris Kolmar has been in the real estate business for almost ten years now. He originally worked for Movoto Real Estate as the director of marketing before founding HomeSnacks.
He believes the key to finding the right place to live comes down to looking at the data, reading about things to do, and, most importantly, checking it out yourself before you move.
If you've been looking for a place to live in the past several years, you've probably stumbled upon his writing already.
