California Public School Enrollment Continues Post-Pandemic Decline

Enrollment in California public schools declined for the seventh straight year, placing continuing financial pressure on school districts to cut staff or close schools to account for the lower number of students in their classrooms.

Enrollment for the current school year totaled 5,806,221 students, down 31,469 or 0.54% from the prior year, according to data released Tuesday by the California Department of Education. The number is significantly lower than the 6.1 million students enrolled in the state’s public schools in the year before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

“The most striking indication of these latest enrollment data is that … the dramatic exodus of families and students from public schools early in the pandemic has not reversed itself,” said Thomas Dee, an education professor at Stanford University who has been studying public school enrollment since the pandemic.

Dee said a substantial amount of enrollment decline is due to lower birth rates, families moving out of the state, and a rise in private school and homeschooling enrollment. The most recent state data shows enrollment in homeschools almost doubled from 25,423 in 2018–19 to 49,402 in 2023–24, while private school enrollment increased from 521,116 to 551,052.

Districts that saw substantial enrollment declines “cannot expect these families to come back anytime soon,” Dee said. “They’ll have to reckon with the financial implications of underpopulated schools that still have the same number of staff.”

Growing enrollment for transitional kindergarten and dual language programs slowed the overall decline. The number of TK students grew 17.2%, from 151,491 to 177,570, while most other grade levels saw a dip in enrollment.

“While we have more work to do, the dramatic growth in TK is inspiring and shows that providing rigorous and quality programs can be a key ingredient to bringing more families back to our schools,” Tony Thurmond, the state Superintendent of Public Instruction, said in a statement.

California is in the middle of expanding this new grade so that by this fall, any child who turns 4 by Sept. 1 can enroll in a free year of pre-kindergarten. San Francisco Unified School District, which is facing a major budget shortfall partly caused by declining enrollment, reported a 10% increase in applications for the 2025-26 school year, with the biggest surge in enrollment for TK.

Gov. Gavin Newsom initially proposed spending $3.9 billion in the 2025–26 budget to fully implement the program, anticipating roughly 60,000 additional TK students would enroll. But last week, he scaled back funding for TK in the May revision of his proposed budget by $300 million, partly due to a reduction in the state’s projected enrollment for this grade.

Proponents of the state’s TK expansion said the growth is worth celebrating.

“We’re going to become the state with the largest universal preschool program in the nation,” said Carolyne Crolotte, director of policy at Early Edge California. “We know the importance of early learning in this critical time in children’s life, and we have the opportunity to set them up for success in their K–12 journey and beyond, so this is very exciting.”