While most students are returning to school as usual this month, more than 19,000 California students face a different reality. Their schools have closed this year. The closures follow a persistent decline in enrollment that has schools struggling to balance budgets. In the 2025-26 school year, enrollment at California public schools dropped 1.3%, the biggest decline since 2021-22, losing 74,961 students.
California public schools closed so far in 2026 as of July, including 35 district or county-run schools and 38 charter schools.
Education funding in California is based on a school district’s average daily attendance, so a fall in student enrollments leads to a decline in district revenue. Since many of the costs of running a school are fixed, laying off staff and cutting programs may not be enough to balance the budget, and districts face painful choices.
However, school closures do not always directly follow enrollment declines. Enrollment at California public schools, mostly steady or growing since the turn of the century, began falling steadily in 2016, increasing in pace with the arrival of the Covid pandemic. In this same period, school closures actually declined, falling from 2016 to 2023. But the trend reversed in 2024, with the number of school closures climbing to 79 in 2025. With 73 closures as of July 2026, it’s unclear if the upward trend will persist. Are long-term enrollment declines catching up with school districts?
The number of students affected by school closures, roughly, in 2026 through July.
Closing schools is usually a last resort, with districts turning first to other ways of balancing budgets to offset the impact of enrollment declines. In addition, the state’s funding formula (the Local Control Funding Formula, or LCFF) includes mechanisms to soften the immediate impact of enrollment drops, including giving districts the option to base funding on attendance in the prior year or three-year average.
But prolonged enrollment declines, in what appears to be a long-term trend, eventually make an impact. When districts do turn to closing schools, they are more likely to be schools that have lower test scores and serve higher numbers of low-income students and English learners, according to a 2023 report by PPIC (Public Policy Institute of California). This bears out for the 73 schools closed this year. Test scores at the closed schools were 14.3% lower than the state average in English, and 14.6% lower in math. The share of students from low-income households at the closed schools was 73%, compared with 62.5% for all schools.
The number of public schools closed in Los Angeles Unified as of July 2026, the most of any California district, 13 of which were charter schools.
School closures this year in California have been concentrated in urban areas with declining student enrollment. Factors driving those declines include migration to other states or other parts of California, falling birth rates and immigration enforcement actions.
Los Angeles Unified, with 14 schools closed, experienced a 4.5% drop in enrollment — roughly 16,765 students — from 2024-25 to 2025-26. Over the past decade, it lost 22.2% of its enrollment. San Jose Unified, with five schools closed, had its enrollment shrink by 22.5% since 2015-16. Oakland Unified, also with five schools closed, has had an 8.7% decrease in enrollment since 2015-16.
More than half of the school closures this year were charter schools: 38 independent charter schools, 34 district-run schools and 1 county-run school. In LA Unified, 13 of the 14 schools closed were charters. Charter schools, like conventional public schools, are funded by average daily attendance. While there are other reasons why LAUSD’s Charter Schools division would choose not to renew the 13 charters, it may be a factor that those schools experienced a 27% drop in enrollment in the past five years.
In theory, a decline in enrollment can be an opportunity for affected school districts to rebalance available resources in favor of students and school communities who need them. California consistently has one of the highest student-to-teacher ratios in the country, with an average of 21 students per classroom in 2025, compared to a national average of 15. If student population declines are not followed by teacher layoffs, districts could reduce the size of their most overcrowded classrooms, giving students more direct attention from teachers and making classrooms more manageable for educators.
The rise in school closures comes at a time when California’s public TK-12 schools have record funding available, with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s final budget securing $128 billion from the state’s general fund. While the funding of individual schools and districts is determined by attendance and enrollment, the overall funds the state has available is not. Prop 98 guarantees a minimum funding level of roughly 40% of the state’s general fund, regardless of enrollment.
Data source: California Department of Education, accessed Aug. 14, 2026
This story was originally published by EdSource.