The Reality of Declining Enrollment

Hallway Echoes// Walking in the empty hallways, the students navigate a school that is more empty than usual. But what caused this decline in enrollment, why are the hallways more empty than usual?

For years, American schools have been getting smaller. Declining birth rates, rising housing costs and growing competition from charter, magnet and other school options have contributed to fewer students enrolling in public schools. While the effects look different from district to district, the basic question is becoming increasingly difficult for schools to avoid: what happens when there are simply fewer students to serve?The Clark County School District (CCSD) is experiencing that shift firsthand. District enrollment has fallen by more than 10,000 students since last year, bringing the district to roughly 270,900 students. Enrollment peaked at about 323,000 students in 2019.

Nevada’s Pupil-Centered Funding Plan makes the connection between enrollment and school funding especially direct. More students lead to more funding; less students lead to less funding. So, as school sizes decrease, so does their funding.

But what does that actually look like inside a school?

At Coronado High School, enrollment has gradually fallen from more than 3,400 students to about 2,700. However, this shift did not happen all at once; rather, it was a gradual decline that occurred over the course of several years.

“When Coronado used to have 3,400 kids, our freshman class had over 1,000 kids in it,” Principal Michael Piccinini said. “The current freshman class has 615 kids.”

The difference is more than a smaller freshman class. As enrollment falls, the amount of funding a school receives falls with it, which can eventually affect the number of teachers and programs a school can support.

“The number of children at school is directly correlated to the number of faculty members that we have,” Piccinini said. “And as we shrink, we have to have less people. At some point, when you have less people, you have less programs.”

For students, however, those changes may not always be obvious. A class disappearing from the course catalog or a teacher position not being replaced can happen gradually, making it difficult to connect the change back to the number of students enrolled at the school.

The effects can already be seen in some areas of Coronado. Some programs have been consolidated to account for these changes; meanwhile other programs and classes have been eliminated entirely. For example, classes like our guitar classes used to have their own teacher, but now the orchestra teacher takes on orchestra in addition to the guitar class.

“I think students might benefit from a smaller Coronado population because they can get more attention and help from teachers in a more one-on-one environment, but they might lose the opportunity to build more relationships and have more participation in clubs,” a student who asked to remain anonymous said.

The student’s perspective highlights another side of the issue. While declining enrollment can mean fewer resources and staff, it does not necessarily mean schools have dramatically smaller classes. Instead, the schools have fewer teachers serving a smaller student population, meaning the number of courses and programs it can offer can also shrink while class sizes remain high.

“We try really hard not to cut programs because even if a few kids are taking them, they matter,” Piccinini said. “But as the enrollment has shrunk, we have shrunk too.”

The changes at Coronado are part of a larger shift facing public schools. Declining birth rates, rising housing costs and increased competition between different types of schools can all contribute to declining enrollment.

Housing can play a role in where families with children live as well. As housing becomes more expensive, older residents may remain in homes that once would have been sold to younger families. With fewer young families moving into some communities, schools can eventually have fewer children entering their classrooms.

At the same time, families have more options for where their children attend school. Charter schools, magnet programs and other specialized schools can draw students away from traditional neighborhood schools, giving families more choices but also changing the number of students at individual campuses.

At Coronado, the decline has happened little by little, allowing administration to adjust staffing and courses gradually rather than all at once. Yet Coronado's experience highlights a fundamental flaw: when funding strictly follows the student, declining enrollment creates an immediate budget deficit, regardless of a school's fixed operating costs.

What is happening in Henderson is part of a national trend. As student counts drop across the U.S., districts everywhere are discovering that per-pupil funding formulas make it nearly impossible to keep full-service high schools running at the same level. Until those state formulas adapt to smaller student bodies, high schools will be forced to keep cutting back.