1,156 U.S. Schools Closed Last Year as Enrollment Keeps Falling

More than a thousand American public schools shut their doors in the last academic year, the highest number since the pandemic, according to a new national analysis — and the students are disappearing faster than the buildings. A total of 1,156 schools closed, an analysis of federal data by Big Local News at Stanford University found, while public school enrollment remained more than 1.4 million students below its 2019 level.

A dark and empty Pennycook Elementary School in Vallejo, California, on Aug. 18, 2026. The campus was one of 1,156 U.S. public schools that closed in the last academic year. (AP Photo/Juliana Yamada)

The findings, published November 9, 2026, by The Associated Press, The Hechinger Report and Big Local News, describe a slow-moving crisis now forcing painful choices nationwide.

The Numbers Behind the Closures

Nationwide, public school enrollment fell by more than 1.4 million students, roughly 3 percent, between fall 2019 and fall 2024, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal education data collected by Stanford University economist Thomas Dee and sociologist Jaymes Pyne. Enrollment dropped from about 50.8 million students in fall 2019 to 49.4 million in fall 2024, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, which projects enrollment will keep declining through 2031.

The total number of operating schools has also declined, but only to about its pre-pandemic level, the researchers found. That gap is the heart of the problem: districts are running nearly the same number of buildings for far fewer children.

Penny Nunez-Brandao sits in class on her first day at Glen Cove Elementary in Vallejo on Aug. 17, 2026, after her previous school closed. (AP Photo/Juliana Yamada)

A School Year That Started With Goodbyes

In Vallejo, California, a working-class district near San Francisco, the national numbers have a human face. Minutes before the first bell on a morning this August, fifth grader Penny Nunez-Brandao scanned the crowd outside Glen Cove Elementary School, looking for familiar faces.

"I don't see any," she told her mom. "None of my friends are coming."

Penny was starting at an entirely new school after her previous one shuttered. The Vallejo City Unified School District serves half as many students as it did two decades earlier, and 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.

Inside the receiving classrooms that first week, the strain showed. Penny's new teacher had 32 students in his first-ever class. Seven percent of Vallejo's teachers were substitutes on the first day. Then, on a Tuesday in October, Penny's mother learned from the school portal that Penny's teacher had resigned, effective immediately. That night, she called a competing charter school in Vallejo to ask if it still had room for her daughter.

Why Enrollment Is Falling

Lower birth rates are the primary reason for the enrollment decline, according to the reporting, but they are not the only one. A federal crackdown on immigration and the post-pandemic expansion of private school vouchers and homeschool options have also contributed.

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 districts throughout the country, including large systems in Cleveland, Houston and Philadelphia, are facing similar closures. In Cleveland, enrollment has fallen from about 74,000 in 2000 to 34,000 in 2025, and the district plans to shutter 29 schools in the 2026-27 school year.

The financial consequences are severe. A June policy brief from WestEd and Bellwether estimated that enrollment losses could reduce annual state education revenue by $11.5 billion by 2030-31, with declines projected in 40 states and the District of Columbia. Lydia Rainey, research principal at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, warned superintendents not to expect birth rates to bounce back: "That's extremely wishful thinking. States aren't about to open the coffers and swoop in with additional funds to save schools."

The Closures That Do Not Pay

Closing schools rarely yields the financial relief districts hope for, research shows. Busing students to their reassigned schools, severance for laid-off staff and security for empty facilities often eat up any savings. A Stanford study of districts from 2011 through 2019 found that closures were associated with lower spending but also with lower revenue as additional families left.

Closing schools can also set students back academically and make it harder to attract teachers, who may worry the jobs are not stable. Marisa de la Torre, a managing director of the UChicago Consortium on School Research, said studies from the University of Chicago show that displaced students often suffer long-term drops in reading and math, especially when they end up at low-performing schools.

Closures can also trigger a new 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 neighboring districts. "Families are literally packing up their kids and moving away," said Penny's mother, Kimberly Nunez-Brandao, who already moved her older son to a competing charter school.

The empty buildings themselves become a burden. The vacant campuses are vulnerable to burglaries, forcing the district to spend more on security, according to Marin Trujillo Cuevas, the district's executive director for operations.

A District Built for a Different Reality

Vallejo's school district is no stranger to budget crises: mismanagement in the early 2000s brought it to the brink of bankruptcy, and a $60 million state emergency bailout kept it under state oversight until summer 2024.

Around the time the state lifted the financial receivership, Ruben Aurelio took the helm as superintendent and soon recognized a new set of budget problems. The district had used Covid-19 relief funding to pay for staff salaries, one-time funding that evaporated early last year. Meanwhile, enrollment dipped below 10,000 students for the first time. Vallejo schools, on average, were only 46 percent full, according to the district.

Aurelio wasted no time sharing the bad news with families. "I don't think I ever said, 'If we close schools.' I started by saying, 'When we close,'" he recalled. In early 2025, he announced two rounds of closures: the first shuttered two K-8 schools at the end of that academic year, and the second closed three of the district's 10 elementary schools.

"We're not just closing schools to close schools," Aurelio said. "We're right-sizing a district that was built for significantly more kids. And if we're going to actually improve outcomes for the kids we still have, we need to concentrate resources."

The district is also trying to give families reasons to stay, renovating older campuses and planning a Tagalog-language school to draw Filipino families from across the Bay Area.

What This Means

The school closure wave is, at its core, a demographic story with a funding crisis attached. American families are having fewer children, and the public school system — built over decades for a growing population — now has too many buildings, too many staff positions and too little money to sustain them all.

The danger is that the cuts feed on themselves. Each closure pushes some families toward charters, private schools or other districts, which pulls more per-pupil funding out of the district, which forces more closures. Research suggests the academic damage to displaced students can last for years. And the pain is unlikely to fall evenly: an earlier Hechinger Report analysis warned that a school closure cliff is coming and that Black and Hispanic students are likely to bear the brunt.

Vallejo Unified School District Superintendent Ruben Aurelio stands outside Federal Terrace Elementary School. He says the district is 'right-sizing' for far fewer students.  (AP Photo/Juliana Yamada)

What Happens Next

More closures are coming. The enrollment projections point downward through 2031, and the WestEd and Bellwether estimate of $11.5 billion in lost annual state revenue by 2030-31 suggests the financial squeeze will tighten before it eases. Cleveland's plan to close 29 schools next school year is a sign of what other large districts may soon face.

In Vallejo, the school board faces a December 2025 deadline to choose three more neighborhood schools to close, and Penny's mother is not optimistic. "They're doing it all over again," Nunez-Brandao said of her daughter's experience this year. "And I can promise you: More schools are going to close."

For families like hers, the national statistics are not abstract. They are a daughter scanning a schoolyard for friends who are not there, a classroom of 32 children, and a teacher who resigned two months into the year. The 1,156 closed schools are the visible edge of a much larger shift — one that will reshape American public education for years to come.