US School Closures Rise as Enrollment Falls and Budgets Tighten

Penny Núñez-Brandão looked outside Glen Cove Elementary School this August and told her mom she did not see any of her friends.

As U.S. birth rates continue a multi-decade slide and state funding dries up, cash-strapped school districts are closing campuses to save money.

Based on a Stanford University Big Local News analysis of federal figures, 1,156 schools shut down throughout the previous academic year, marking the peak count since the pandemic.

New research shows student enrollment has fallen much faster than schools are closing, which suggests more painful financial choices lie ahead for districts.

Vallejo City Unified School District serves half as many students as it did two decades earlier. District leaders have closed five campuses since 2025 and placed up to a third of all staff positions on the chopping block to help plug a $36 million deficit.

Research shows closing schools rarely yields the financial relief districts hope for. Busing students to reassigned schools, severance for pink-slipped staff, and security for empty facilities often eat up any savings.

School closures can also set students back academically and make it harder to attract teachers who worry about job stability. Rubén Aurelio, superintendent for Vallejo schools, said cuts and closures are necessary to correct for budgets designed for a different reality.

“We’re not just closing schools to close schools,” Aurelio said. “We’re right-sizing a district that was built for significantly more kids.”

Between the fall of 2019 and 2024, public school enrollment across the country dropped by upwards of 1.4 million students, per an Associated Press review of federal education figures compiled by Stanford University economist Thomas Dee and sociologist Jaymes Pyne.

Lower birth rates are the primary reason for enrollment declines, though a federal crackdown on immigration and the post-pandemic expansion of private school vouchers have also contributed.

A recent report from Bellwether and WestEd projects that shrinking student populations could strip schools of $11.5 billion in annual state funding by the 2030-2031 period.

In Vallejo, where enrollment tumbled from nearly 18,000 in the fall of 2006 to about 9,300, financial troubles have deep roots. The state stepped in with a $60 million emergency bailout in the early 2000s and kept the district under oversight until summer 2024.

Beginning in early 2025, Aurelio unveiled two phases of closures alongside a December 2025 deadline for the school board to approve more staffing reductions and pick three neighborhood schools to shutter during the second phase.

Marisa de la Torre, a managing director of the UChicago Consortium on School Research, said the instability created by school closures may last for a while. University of Chicago research indicates that students forced to move frequently experience persistent declines in reading and math scores over time, particularly when they land in underperforming schools.

“It takes a while to recover, if they recover at all,” de la Torre said.

Weeks into the new school year, Penny Núñez-Brandão still struggled with the transition to Glen Cove and faced larger class sizes. In October, her teacher resigned, and the school will rely on a long-term substitute for now.