Arlington ISD officials say the district is at an inflection point. Declining enrollment has impacted the school system for years — and it doesn’t show any signs of stopping in the next five.
During a special meeting Thursday, Superintendent Matt Smith said the district will have to evaluate all options to attract students and keep them enrolled. Doing so will require big choices in the near future, including new programs and the consolidation or closure of schools, he added.
“We have some major decisions to make in the next year about what schooling in Arlington ISD needs to look like for the future, because some of the decisions we make right now could put us either on that upward trajectory or on that lower trajectory,” Smith said, pointing at future projections of the district’s enrollment.
College Station-based Population and Survey Analysts, or PASA, examined the underlying problems and causes for declining enrollment, and projected Arlington’s future.
Some of Arlington ISD’s enrollment issues lie in its current demographic lifecycle, said Kris Pool, the demographer’s director of planning. Arlington ISD has reached the point of stabilization, as factors like a lack of developable land and a declining birth rate take effect.
“You guys are very different than you were in your lifecycle as a school district,” Pool told trustees.
PASA identifies four stages in a demographic lifecycle:
Emerging growth: Steady enrollment growth and has potential development.
High growth: Rapid growth and development expands.
Approaching stabilization: Enrollment becomes less dependable and development slows due to a lack of land.
Stabilization: Enrollment plateaus and declines as the city reaches near build-out.
Of schools within Education Service Center Region 11, which includes Tarrant, Denton and Johnson counties, Arlington ISD ranks 75th in the enrollment change over the past six years, and 73rd in percent enrollment change.
Some of the highest enrollment growth is occurring west of Arlington, in the Northwest and Eagle Mountain-Saginaw school districts. Region 11 itself has lost roughly 8,000 students in the same six years.
Over the past 10 years, Arlington’s enrollment dropped by over 10,000 students.
Earlier this year, Southlake-based Zonda Demographics projected enrollment dropping to as low as 43,000 students around 2033 before stabilizing.
PASA’s projections were similar.
A large high school student population is preventing steeper enrollment losses, but declining birthrates will catch up eventually, Pool said.
“That happens for tons of districts that are largely built out, that are in those phases of that demographic lifecycle,” she said.
PASA demographer Caroline Couch said multifamily development will play a large role in the city’s future housing stock and, in turn, enrollment.
“Single-family development is expected to play a relatively limited role in AISD’s future housing outlook, which is consistent with an urban district that is nearing buildout,” Couch said.
Senate Bill 840, which allows developers to bypass certain city processes to build multifamily apartments depending on zoning in some cities, could play a role in moving those apartments forward as well, she said.
Under the bill, property zoned commercial, industrial or for offices can immediately be used for multifamily housing. That zoning is most prominent in north and central Arlington, Couch said.
Though the immediate impact is marginal, the district will need to watch the law’s effects closely, she said.
“The legislation could be important long-term catalysts for housing activity within the district,” Couch said.
The district will need to know the impact as it looks into its school usage.
Based on the overall enrollment projections, some schools could see their functional facility usage drop below 50%.
Trustee David Wilbanks expects a lot of facility planning in the near future.
“I don’t think there’s anybody in this room that would argue that a school that’s less than 50%, or around 50% capacity, is the kind of student experience we want for our kids,” Wilbanks said.
Smith also discussed virtual schooling, a subject the trustees spoke about when they last evaluated enrollment data. He said the district is looking into which forms of curriculum would work best.
Parents received an email with a survey on virtual schooling on May 19, spokesperson Taina Northington said.
“If we have 51,000 students in Arlington ISD, and let’s say 200 of them are interested in some form of virtual, I would rather provide it than have a virtual school in Georgia provide that virtual option,” Smith told trustees.
Wilbanks agreed the district needed to look at new options to meet market demand.
“We’re at an inflection point, and we either do nothing, play defense, play offense, or do both, and I think we need a comprehensive plan to do both, play offense and defense, given the data that we see,” Wilbanks said.
One issue the trustees will soon discuss and consider will be moving sixth grade into junior high school, Smith said.
The district will call a facility planning committee to look at the data and “reimagine Arlington ISD,” Smith said. He expects the months leading up to January will be spent looking through new program options, as well as the consolidation or closures of some under-used schools.
“That’s a discussion that has to happen over the next eight months, so that we can get things underway because it doesn’t all happen overnight,” Smith said. “From that point, it’s going to be a multi-year process based on the data that we have here in front of us.”
Chris Moss is a reporter for the Arlington Report. Contact him at chris.moss@arlingtonreport.org.
At the Arlington Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://fortworthreport.org/2026/05/24/as-enrollment-declines-arlington-isd-leaders-signal-potential-school-closures/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://fortworthreport.org”>Arlington Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/fortworthreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/cropped-favicon.png?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
<img id=”republication-tracker-tool-source” src=”https://fortworthreport.org/?republication-pixel=true&post=566969&ga4=2820184429″ style=”width:1px;height:1px;”><script> PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: “https://fortworthreport.org/2026/05/24/as-enrollment-declines-arlington-isd-leaders-signal-potential-school-closures/”, urlref: window.location.href }); } } </script> <script id=”parsely-cfg” src=”//cdn.parsely.com/keys/fortworthreport.org/p.js”></script>