Schools in Los Angeles County, particularly those in the LA Unified School District, are seeing the largest drop in enrollment in California, based on new state data released Thursday.
Across California, enrollment fell 1.3% — about 75,000 students — last year, a percentage drop that’s about average among the 39 districts that have released enrollment figures for the current school year. All 39 recorded enrollment declines, based on an analysis by the California Department of Education. States with the largest percentage declines include Hawaii, New Hampshire and New York.
“California’s declining school enrollment reflects a national trend,” said Elizabeth Sanders, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Education. In addition, “information shows that some California families are moving to more affordable urban communities like Elk Grove and Vacaville.“
The national statistics are consistent with declining birth rates across the country, although other factors are at play locally, including in Los Angeles County, such as housing costs, declining immigration and the state’s aggressive efforts to deport undocumented immigrants.
“There are some surprises in this data, but the decline itself should not be surprising,” said Thomas J. Kane, director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard. “Decreasing birth rates mean declining enrollment. The magnitude of the decline should be manageable – but only if schools adjust their programs now, rather than waiting.”
Common methods of dealing with declining enrollment include closing schools and reducing staff. Both are painful moves for school communities and have been opposed in the Los Angeles Unified School District and elsewhere.
This week, LAUSD officials have just begun a strike by agreeing to key staff raises and reversing nearly 200 layoffs and agreeing to hire hundreds of counselors, school psychologists and other student support staff. The school system has not identified any campuses that may be closed.
Los Angeles County, with 80 school districts, has more students than any other California county, so its effect on statewide enrollment will always be significant. Last year a drop in enrollment rates was announced, reducing the numbers across the state.
Los Angeles County public school enrollment for the 2025-26 school year dropped from the previous year by 32,953 students, or 2.6%, to 1,242,816. That drop would be equivalent to the disappearance of the entire Moreno Valley Unified School District, one of the state’s 25 largest school systems.
The regional decline represents 44% of the national decline. In comparison, the district is made up of about 22% public students.
In LA Unified, the decrease was 16,765 students, or 4.5%. LA Unified’s share of the statewide reduction is 22.4%. The district has about 7% of public school students.
According to state numbers, LA Unified’s enrollment is 353,065 and was 369,830 last year.
LA Unified has a different and larger enrollment figure based on a different tabulation system, but the percentage drop is similar to what the state calculated — and it didn’t surprise district officials when asked for their reaction.
District officials also noted state statistics that show enrollment is low, including in homeschools, private schools and charter schools. Charters are privately run public schools.
“Los Angeles Unified’s enrollment trends reflect the same demographic changes affecting school systems across California and the nation,” officials said in a statement. “Enrollment is down across all school types this year, driven largely by long-term factors such as declining birth rates and changing migration patterns due to the cost of living.”
“Like other large urban districts, Los Angeles Unified also faces increased geographic pressures, including housing affordability and the impact of immigration enforcement policies, which have contributed to the most pronounced declines in our communities.”
Critics of the school district say school system administrators are to blame, although demographers support the district’s analysis.
“It’s quite possible that some of this decline is due to an increase in the level and intensity of immigration enforcement,” said Stanford University professor Thomas S. Dee. “I have found in previous research that immigration enforcement reduces enrollment by causing some to flee and deterring new entrants.”
In terms of raw numbers, Santa Ana Unified, which lost 2,291 students, trails LA Unified in enrollment decline. That’s down 6.4% from last year. Immigrant enforcement also fell heavily on families in that school system.
School systems with higher enrollments include Elk Grove Unified, which gained 1,097 students, a 1.7 percent increase. Vacaville Unified enrolled 557 more students, a 4.9% increase. Counties with high enrollment include San Joaquin, Placer and Sutter.
A mixed picture of private and home education
There was a year-on-year decline in all school types.
Schools operated by regular school districts decreased by 1.4%, almost exactly the same as the statewide figure. This shows that the majority of students, about 5.73 million, are in public schools.
Charter schools fell slightly across the country, by about 0.3%.
The number of home schooled students decreased by 3.7%. For data purposes, a home school is defined as an independent school with fewer than six students. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, in the 2018-19 school year, there were fewer than 25,000 homeschooled students. The number rose in 2020-21, when the pandemic campus closed, to nearly 60,000. The current count is 49,365.
Private school enrollment decreased by 6.6% compared to last year; now it is much less than before the epidemic.
In 2018-19, private school enrollment reached 500,000. Enrollment dropped at the beginning of the pandemic, then increased in 2022-23. Current enrollment is 461,650, a decrease of 32,814 from last year.
In the bigger picture, says Stanford’s Dee, “we’re seeing increasing evidence that families who left the public school system during the violence haven’t really returned.”
UC Berkeley education professor Bruce Fuller focused on the decline of private schools, noting that “few parents seem to be able to afford private schools.”
He was also drawn to another statistic – the increase in the number of families using temporary, fully-available daycare across the state for four-year-olds this school year.
That number is 213,313, up 20.1% from last year.
“Free TK is growing in popularity, especially among middle-income Angelenos who previously faced daunting child care bills,” Fuller said. “The downside is that many non-profit preschools have gone under after losing their 4-year-olds.”
Overall, the declining birth rate “continues to wreak havoc on the fragile health of public schools,” Fuller added. Paradoxically, rising educational attainment, enjoyed especially by young Latina mothers, leads to fewer births.
