Fairfax County Public Schools enrollment declines by thousands

School leaders across the DMV region are having to make some tough choices as fewer students are enrolling in school, which often means less funding from the state.

The Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) superintendent told the school board last week their current enrollment is several thousand students less than they expected.

When FCPS started planning for the current school year, back in June, they had 176,000 students. But by the end of summer, enrollment had dropped to 172,000 students.

“We were off by several thousand students, which created a need to adjust in real time,” said Superintendent Michelle Reid to the board.

And by that, she meant not hiring as many people. Reid said FCPS is now starting a “workforce rebalancing committee” to look at how they can instead move staff around.

“If we have fewer students, we don’t want to continue hiring more staff,” she said. “I know last year we reassigned a number of assistant principals because we were overstaffed in some of those areas.”

Data from FCPS shows enrollment has steadily dropped four years in a row.

It’s also a nationwide trend, according to the Education Commission of the States. In the past five years, there’s been a 2.3% drop.

And in the next five years, experts are projecting a 5.5% drop.

“Probably the largest national reason is that there is a decline in birth rates. So it’s just a demographic decline,” said Joshua Glazer, an education policy professor at George Washington University. “We’ve seen a big increase in homeschooling since the pandemic, and private schooling of course, too.”

Glazer said in the DMV, cost of living could also be a factor, with families not able to afford homes there.

But when enrollment goes down at schools, that means less funding from the state, and school systems could be forced to cut things like jobs or afterschool programs.

“If you lose 10% of your student body, your costs do not go down 10%,” Glazer said. “And that’s just because there are a large number of overhead costs: costs of buildings, staff, the central office, and so forth.”

Over in Montgomery County, the school system says enrollment dropped for the first time in 40 years, partly because of lower birth rates, and also because of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It’s why MCPS is launching a two-year study to consider closing some schools.

“It’s really important that people have multiple opportunities and ways to engage with us,” Andrea Swiatocha, acting chief operations officer for Montgomery County Public Schools previously told News4 when asked what their message was for concerned parents.

News4 reached out to Fairfax County Schools to ask how they plan to handle the declining enrollment but has not heard back.