{"id":77336,"date":"2025-12-05T14:19:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T14:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/77336\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T14:19:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T14:19:11","slug":"arlington-isds-enrollment-projected-to-drop-below-50000-next-year-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/77336\/","title":{"rendered":"Arlington ISD\u2019s enrollment projected to drop below 50,000 next year"},"content":{"rendered":"

In April, Arlington ISD trustees were told that a declining birth rate and charter schools are pushing the district\u2019s enrollment to fall under 50,000 students by 2032<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now, the school board members know it may happen as soon as next year.<\/p>\n

Board President Justin Chapa said that the enrollment drop was a part of a larger issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look back, there was a lot of, \u2018what are we doing wrong,\u2019 but it\u2019s now clear this is a part of a statewide trend,\u201d Chapa said.<\/p>\n

Between this school year and last, the school district lost over 2,000 students. The only other time Arlington ISD lost more students in the past 20 years was during the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s drop is mostly tied to a lack of enrollment between kindergarten and third grade as students continue to graduate, demographer Hudson Huff told trustees Nov. 20.<\/p>\n

Huff works with Southlake-based Zonda Demographics, a firm that creates projections for school districts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do see the impact of what we\u2019re seeing related to charters and some of our home school numbers, but a large percentage of what we\u2019re seeing is tied to those small grade groups,\u201d Huff said.<\/p>\n

Since 2021, kindergarten enrollment in Arlington ISD has dropped each year. This trend is expected to continue, dropping from about 3,300 students to just under 3,100 between now and 2028 before stabilizing.<\/p>\n

Each of Zonda Demographics\u2019 three projections shows that Arlington ISD will fall under the 50,000 mark next year.<\/p>\n

The projections are based on external factors that could affect enrollment.<\/p>\n

The housing marketPrivate school and homeschool enrollmentThe economyPopulation growthInterest and mortgage rates<\/p>\n

Board member Melody Fowler said that one of the larger problems the district is facing is the affordability of homes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think until we can provide more economical housing, we\u2019re going to keep seeing this decline, and that\u2019s sad,\u201d Fowler said.<\/p>\n

The average home value in Arlington sits around $305,000, which is slightly higher than the average home value in Texas of $297,000, according to Zillow.<\/p>\n

Superintendent Matt Smith said that he has had conversations with city officials about affordability, saying that an aging population has made it difficult to find places for young professionals, who would bring students in.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve gotta have a constant dialog with our city to try and make sure that we\u2019re thinking about that for the future,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n

Trustee David Wilbanks said the enrollment drop could have further consequences than empty seats in classrooms.<\/p>\n

Public schools in Texas receive state funding based on their attendance. The district\u2019s 2025-26 adopted budget is made up of $276 million<\/a> of state funds.<\/p>\n

Wilbanks, who has been on the school board since 2019, said that the district can no longer expect that number to stay the same.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe typically underestimate the revenue we get from the property tax base, which is based on attendance, and roughly enrollment,\u201d Wilbanks said. \u201c(The 2024-25 school year) is the first time I\u2019ve seen us overestimating, and the reason why was the declining enrollment was hard to predict.\u201d<\/p>\n

The district is already facing a $13 million budget shortfall<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chief Communications Officer Taina Northington said the district had budgeted for a 2.5% decline in enrollment but experienced a 3.8% decline.<\/p>\n

The budget will be amended in the spring to reflect the changes in enrollment. To respond to the current shortfall, the district departments have begun reducing their budgets through the use of zero-based budgeting<\/a>, Northington said.<\/p>\n

Lower enrollment trends are not issues isolated to Arlington ISD. Across the state, public school enrollment has only risen from 5,232,065 students to 5,544,255 between the 2014-15 school year and the 2024-25 school year, according to Texas Education Agency data.<\/p>\n

From the 2023-24 school year to the 2024-25 school year, enrollment only rose by .2%, the second-lowest increase since the TEA began tracking such data in 2000.<\/p>\n

Chapa said that a shifting perspective on public education in Texas could also be playing a factor in the dropping enrollment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe state has been growing very rapidly for decades, and it\u2019s only recently that the enrollment in public schools has not kept up with the growth in population as people move here,\u201d Chapa said.<\/p>\n

Chris Moss is a reporting fellow for the Arlington Report. Contact him at\u00a0chris.moss@fortworthreport.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At the Arlington Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This article<\/a> first appeared on Arlington Report<\/a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In April, Arlington ISD trustees were told that a declining birth rate and charter schools are pushing the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[150,152,151],"class_list":{"0":"post-77336","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arlington","8":"tag-arlington","9":"tag-arlington-headlines","10":"tag-arlington-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}