School closures are accelerating in the US, but more financial pain lies ahead

As birth rates in the United States continue a multidecade slide and state and federal education funding dries up, a growing number of cash-strapped school districts have resorted to closing campuses to save money. Thousands of students have had to adjust to entirely new schools this academic year.

A total of 1,156 schools closed during the last academic year — the highest number since the pandemic, according to an analysis of federal data by Big Local News at Stanford University. At the same time, new research shows student enrollment has fallen much faster than schools are closing, suggesting more painful financial choices lie ahead.

Penny Nunez-Brandao, a fifth grader in Vallejo, California, scanned the crowd outside Glen Cove Elementary School one morning in August, looking for familiar faces. She told her mom, "I don't see any. None of my friends are coming." Her previous school had closed, so she had to enrol in a new one.

The Vallejo City Unified School District, a working-class district near San Francisco, serves half as many students as it did two decades earlier. District leaders have closed five campuses since 2025 — a quarter of its schools. They have also placed up to a third of all staff positions on the chopping block to help plug a staggering $36 million deficit.

Still, research shows closing schools rarely yields the financial relief districts hope for. Busing students to their 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 may worry the jobs are not stable.

Closing schools can also trigger a downward spiral, as frustrated families flee to charter or private schools or other districts. In Vallejo, some parents said they chose to homeschool this fall or were planning to sell their homes and move to neighbouring districts.

Penny's mother, Kimberly Nunez-Brandao, said: "Families are literally packing up their kids and moving away." She has already moved her older son to a competing charter school.

Nationwide, public school enrollment fell by more than 1.4 million students, roughly 3%, between fall 2019 and 2024, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal education data collected by Stanford University economist Thomas Dee and sociologist Jaymes Pyne. The total number of schools has also declined, but only to about pre-pandemic levels, the researchers found, suggesting closures are lagging enrollment declines.

Lower birth rates are the primary reason for the enrollment decline, but a federal crackdown on immigration and the post-pandemic expansion of private school vouchers and homeschool options have contributed to the decline. Bellwether and WestEd, two research groups, recently estimated declining enrollment could cause schools to lose $11.5 billion in state revenue annually by 2030-2031, potentially prompting widespread layoffs, cuts to academic programs and school closures.

In Vallejo, enrollment has tumbled from nearly 18,000 in the fall of 2006 to about 9,300, according to the district. California has recorded one of the nation's most precipitous enrollment drops. But school districts throughout the country, including large systems in Cleveland, Houston and Philadelphia, are facing similar closures.

The enrollment and financial situation is unlikely to improve, said Lydia Rainey, research principal at the Center on Reinventing Public Education. "That's extremely wishful thinking," she said. "States aren't about to open the coffers and swoop in with additional funds to save schools."

Ruben Aurelio, superintendent for Vallejo schools, acknowledged cuts and closures can be hard for families but said they are necessary to correct for school districts and 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."