School shutdown spree grips California as enrollment plunges statewide

California’s schools are closing at an alarming rate.

More than 19,000 California students are facing a very different back-to-school season this year after their schools closed amid a years-long enrollment decline that is putting the squeeze on districts across the state.

California’s public school enrollment fell by 1.3% during the 2025-26 school year, meaning nearly 75,000 fewer students were enrolled. It was the biggest annual drop since 2021-22 according to EdSource.

For school districts, fewer kids means fewer dollars. California largely ties school funding to attendance, leaving districts scrambling when enrollment shrinks while many of their operating costs stubbornly refuse to budge.

And the decline isn’t exactly a blip.

Enrollment began steadily falling around 2016 and accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet school closures initially moved in the opposite direction, declining between 2016 and 2023.

Then came the school-shuttering spree.

There were 79 closures in 2025, while 73 schools have already closed as of July of this year.

“It’s been on the downward trend since I started. It’s never been drastic from one year to the next, but when you add up the numbers … that adds up over time,” Los Angeles social studies teacher William Chavez told SFGATE.

Michael Kirst, a Stanford professor emeritus and former president of the California State Board of Education, said the problem is hardly confined to one corner of the state.

“This is happening everywhere,” Kirst told the outlet. “There are very few districts that aren’t experiencing it.”

The culprit is a nasty cocktail of factors: families moving out of California or to less-expensive parts of the state, immigration enforcement and a dramatic decline in the number of babies being born.

California’s fertility rate fell from 2.21 children per woman in 2007 to just 1.48 in 2023, according to the Public Policy Institute of America, well below the 2.1 replacement level needed to maintain a stable population.

The “baby bust” is partly the result of a spectacular collapse in teen births, which have plunged 86% since 1991. Birth rates have also fallen among women in their 20s, while a rise among women 35 and older hasn’t been enough to offset the decline.

The trend isn’t unique to California. Birth rates have dropped in every state since 2008, although California’s decline has been slightly steeper than the national average.

UC Irvine sociology professor Paul Hanselman told the Orange County Register that the roots of the trend stretch back to the Great Recession.

“The big pattern is the Great Recession,” Hanselman said, noting that birth rates peaked around 2008 and have declined since.

“There’s a lot of explanations, but economic explanations in terms of challenges of having kids is a big part of the story, and it doesn’t feel like we’ve gone back,” he said.

Meanwhile, California’s famously exorbitant housing costs are making it increasingly difficult for families to stick around.

“California has an added problem of the cost of housing, which is especially high in urban areas,” Kirst told SFGATE. “Families with children can’t afford to live there.”

Los Angeles Unified has especially felt the pain. The district closed 14 schools after enrollment dropped by about 16,765 students in a single year, according to EdSource.

San Jose Unified closed five schools after losing 22.5% of its enrollment since 2015-16, while Oakland Unified also closed five after enrollment fell 8.7%.

The schools being shuttered also tend to serve some of the state’s most vulnerable students. This year, test scores at closed schools were roughly 14% below the statewide average in both English and math, while 73% of students came from low-income households, compared with 62.5% statewide.

Still, fewer students could offer districts an opportunity, if they use it wisely.

California averaged about 21 students per classroom in 2025, compared with 15 nationally. Rather than automatically chopping teachers and programs, districts could potentially use smaller student populations to reduce overcrowding and give teachers more one-on-one time with kids.

Ironically, California’s public schools have record levels of overall state funding available, with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s final budget providing about $128 billion from the state’s general fund.

But as the state’s classrooms continue to empty, districts are discovering that even a record-sized pot of money can’t make the demographic math disappear.