LAUSD Closes Campuses as Enrollment Plummets

The second-largest public school district in the United States is closing schools. LA Unified School District announced a citywide effort in September to identify buildings and campuses for closure. The district has faced a 4% enrollment drop for two consecutive school years. It lost more than 300,000 students over the last two decades.

Kelly Gonez, a board member for LAUSD, attributes the initial decline to shrinking families. "Birth rates here in Los Angeles County have been declining for decades, which means fewer children enrolled in our schools," she said. U.S. Census data shows the population of children under 18 began to fall nationwide after 2010. That number dropped by roughly 2.1 million kids through 2025.

Federal immigration policy has intensified the loss of students. The Migration Policy Institute found that as many as 1.9 million people left the U.S. during the first 18 months of the Trump administration's second term. Federal officials weakened restrictions that prevented ICE agents from operating near public schools. Gonez said families immediately went into hiding. The district predicted a 2% drop in enrollment but saw a drop of double that figure.

The demographic shift is reshaping education systems across the country. A June report by Bellwether and WestEd warned that public schools have entered an era of sustained enrollment declines. The study identified a sustained drop in birth rates as the primary driver, followed by a national slowdown in immigration. The analysis predicts a loss of $11 billion a year in public school funding linked to falling enrollment. These trends are reshaping districts in 40 states.

Thomas Dee, an economist at Stanford University, noted that birth rates and immigration levels are low at the same time for the first time since the Great Depression. Large-scale deportations mean even bigger and more rapid changes in areas with large immigrant communities. Dee studied public schools in California's Central Valley in 2025. He found that student daily absences spiked more than 20% in communities hit by ICE raids.

Texas saw the number of kids in classrooms plunge statewide by more than 76,000 students last year. A study by the Texas Education Agency found the vast majority of that drop came among Hispanic kids and the children of immigrant families. Florida saw a similar decline after the administration stripped temporary protected status from Haitian refugees in July. Miami-Dade and Broward County lost roughly 30,000 children combined in a single year.

Guadalupe Cardona, a teacher at Santee Education Complex in South Los Angeles, stands outside her school where an ICE agent opened fire in October 2025. No children were injured, but a man from Mexico and an ICE agent were struck by bullets. Cardona believes fear following that clash caused enrollment to plummet. "In my school alone, we had over 200 students that didn't show up on the first day of school," she said. Two teachers left the school at the beginning of the year.

Guadalupe Pineda, a parent who works in a shop near Santee High, said the community is changing. "There's definitely less sales, less traffic, less everything," she said. Pineda secured U.S. citizenship a few years ago. She said she understands why people are pulling their kids out of school. "People are still scared, very much scared to go out to do everyday things," she said.

White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said deportations "make American classrooms less crowded." The administration posted on social media that the total foreign-born population declined 2.9 million from January 2025 to July 2026. Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform said he is not troubled by the prospect that many public school districts will have to downsize. "We don't guarantee the school system X number of kids," Mehlman said.

Brookings Institution estimates that as many as 4.6 million school-age kids, including many U.S. citizens, live in homes with family members vulnerable to deportation. Vanessa Salazar, a U.S.-born senior in LAUSD, dropped out last year after her mother was detained and deported to Mexico. Salazar now lives in Mexico. "It's like, why am I going to be in this country that doesn't really want my people, my community or my culture?" she said. State officials predict public schools in California alone could lose another 710,000 students over the next decade if current trends in fertility and migration hold.