When Christy Taylor picked her son up on the last day of school in May, the buses looped around the parking lot several times before departing — a school tradition.
The ritual was also a farewell to Parklane Elementary. The Fulton County school district closed the East Point school, and one other, because they enrolled too few students.
“We were just watching as there are kids crying on the buses as they’re leaving because ... they just didn’t understand what was going on,” Taylor said.
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Credit: Jenni Girtman
She was one of the dozens of Fulton parents who urged the district to keep the schools open. The district was facing the same headwinds being felt at schools in metro Atlanta, Georgia and across the country: declining enrollment and increasing costs. This fall, enrollment declined statewide by nearly 30,000 students; over the last 10 years, it’s gone down by nearly 3%.
Most metro Atlanta school systems are losing students at a higher rate. The Cobb, DeKalb and Fulton school systems have seen a roughly 10% decline in the previous decade. Even districts that have grown in recent years, like Gwinnett County, saw a dip in their student counts between the current school year and the previous one.
The change is even more evident when you look at individual schools. In the six core metro Atlanta school systems — Atlanta, Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett — there are roughly 150 schools that experienced an enrollment decline of greater than 20% in the past 10 years.
Put another way: About one in four of the schools in those districts have lost a combined 39,700 students in the last decade. At most of those schools, more than half the students who do attend are economically disadvantaged.
Some of the changes have to do with redistricting, or changing the rules about who attends which schools. But others are the result of factors outside of a school leader’s control — like demographic changes and the rise of school choice.
Enrollment changes by those kinds of dividends pose emotional and financial problems for communities. Buildings with fewer students cost more money to operate. And in Georgia, where state funding is given out on a per-pupil basis, fewer students mean less money for school systems.
The enrollment drops have already forced districts into hard choices. The Atlanta school board unanimously voted this month on a plan that will close nine schools in 2027-28, citing an enrollment decline in some schools as part of the calculus for the decision.
When local leaders start looking at closing or consolidating schools, communities push back against the potential loss. But it’s a problem that’s not likely to go away.
Birth rate decline
Georgia’s population grew by almost 1 million people between 2015 and 2024, according to population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. But that population growth hasn’t translated to the schools.
That can partly be explained by the declining birth rate. In Georgia in 2024, there were 11.31 births per 1,000 people in the state, according to data kept by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2016, it was 12.61 births per 1,000 people. That’s a 10% decrease in the birth rate. The actual number of births has gone down too — by about 3%.
“That means we’re having fewer kids,” said Moshe Haspel, a principal data scientist with the Atlanta Regional Commission. “We don’t need as many schools.”
But there’s more going into it in metro Atlanta. It costs a lot to live in the area these days. Starter homes have appreciated at a higher rate than housing stock overall in the more expensive metro Atlanta counties, according to the ARC, meaning young families face a higher bar for purchasing homes. And with interest rates for a 30-year mortgage currently topping 6%, older adults are stuck in their homes, Haspel said — unwilling or unable to downsize to something smaller and free up homes.
“I know it sounds far separated from the school discussion we’re having, but it’s not,” said Tracy Richter, the vice president of planning services at construction management group HPM. “It has real impacts on the types of people that are coming into the houses, and the houses aren’t (yielding) children like they used to.”
Richter, whose company worked with Atlanta Public Schools on its consolidation plan, used to spend most of his time helping school systems grow their infrastructure. Now, school closures come up a lot more frequently.
Credit: abbey.cutrer@ajc.com
Credit: abbey.cutrer@ajc.com
The rise of school choice
Outside of population changes, there’s another phenomenon that’s influencing school enrollment: the rise of school choice.
Private school enrollment in Georgia has increased at a rate far surpassing the national average. Between 2011 and 2021, the most recent year the National Center for Education Statistics has data, private school enrollment increased by about 4% nationwide. During that same time period in Georgia, it increased by about 27%. The state also saw a 45% increase in homeschooling between 2015-2024.
Combined, that’s tens of thousands of kids choosing not to attend public schools.
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
School choice, vouchers and charter school enrollment “have had huge impacts in states like Georgia, Florida and Texas in the fact that students opt out to go to another alternative than the public school system,” Richter said.
Georgia has three voucher programs now, including one that’s just gone into effect this year. About 8,500 families received a Georgia Promise Scholarship this fall. The program gives $6,500 to students who are zoned to attend a low-performing public school to cover educational expenses like private school or tutoring. Like the other two voucher programs in Georgia, interest in the scholarship is expected to grow.
Closures to come
The NCES predicts public school enrollment in the U.S., which crept over 50 million in the 2010s, will continue to decline through 2031. An analysis by the Brookings Institution takes it even further: By 2050, national public school enrollment could dip below 40 million.
“The pattern is clear: Steep declines make closure more likely but not certain,” the Brookings report says.
Credit: Jenna.Eason@coxinc.com
Credit: Jenna.Eason@coxinc.com
The continued decline is why school systems in the metro Atlanta area are gearing up for possible school closures in the next few years.
Consider:
- City Schools of Decatur announced plans this fall to close one of its five K-2 schools but agreed to slow down the process after parents pushed back, feeling blindsided.
- In 2016, the DeKalb County School District had more than 101,000 students. But by 2034, the district projects its enrollment will decline to 87,300. That’s why it started, this year, a monthslong student assignment planning process, which explores attendance boundary changes, interest in special programs and the possibility of closing schools. The committee also recently slowed down its process. Now the school board won’t make any decisions before fall 2026.
- The Clayton County School District, which has seen enrollment drop by 7% in the last decade, is predicting another 2-3% enrollment drop in the next five years. The district hasn’t made any concrete plans but is considering consolidating some of its schools.
Even the Fulton County School District, which already closed two schools, is blaming looming budget shortfalls on enrollment declines. The district is exploring ways to cut millions of dollars in costs and increase revenue to avoid zeroing out its reserves by fiscal year 2029.
“Without deliberate action, we risk budget shortfalls that could disrupt student learning and essential operations,” said Marvin Dereef, the district’s chief financial officer.
As school system leaders grapple with the future, families like Taylor’s are making the best of things in the present.
Her dad was in the U.S. Army, so she changed schools a lot as a child.
“I learned from being an Army brat … it takes six months for things to begin to feel like home,” she said. Her son James, now a fifth grader at a new school, is learning a similar lesson.
“As much as I love Parklane, my family loves Parklane, and we miss it dearly … we have to embrace the new place that we’re at, or else it will never be home,” she said.
Credit: Christy Taylor
Credit: Christy Taylor
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is exploring the factors contributing to public school closures in metro Atlanta and Georgia. If you have a story idea related to school closures, reach out to education@ajc.com.
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