This story is part of WTOP’s 2026 Back to School coverage.
Prince William County School Board members in Virginia faced an uncomfortable reality during a meeting in February.
With enrollment trends declining, and projections expecting that to continue, the board decided to nix plans for what it hoped would one day become its 14th high school.
The division, the second largest in Virginia, envisioned a 1,400-student facility in Lake Ridge. But several delays, connected in part to enrollment data and increasing costs, prompted the board to ultimately hold off.
The decision to support a Capital Improvement Program that didn’t call for a new high school in Prince William is one of the latest in the series of difficult choices tied to troubling public school enrollment trends across the D.C. region.
Declining birth rates, immigration and migration patterns and housing costs are all playing a role in fewer students enrolling in public schools, experts said.
“There’s a myriad of implications that follow along declining enrollment counts,” said Zachary Jackson, senior researcher at the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center.
Before the pandemic, Virginia’s K-12 enrollment grew for the better part of three decades, Jackson said. It “wobbled” in 2018, peaked in 2019 and fell in 2020, and “we haven’t really seen enrollment rebound.”
Fairfax County Public Schools, Virginia’s largest division, had 2,878 fewer students last year than it did in 2022-23, according to a WTOP analysis of enrollment data from Virginia’s Department of Education.
Prince William had 1,518 fewer last year than in 2022, and Loudoun had 1,672 fewer students enrolled last year compared with 2022-23.
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The three Virginia divisions all reported drops in enrollment last year, compared with 2024-25, too.
Last fall, Loudoun school leaders said rising costs of living and home prices were playing a role in enrollment trends.
“We are seeing a slowing and declining in our enrollment,” Beverly Tate, director of planning and GIS services, said during a presentation last year.
“It’s certainly going to have an effect on staffing. It’s going to have an effect on new school construction.”
As fewer kids enter kindergarten, Jackson said it “slowly erodes the foundation of K-12 enrollment.” In Virginia, the declining birth rate started around 2008, he said.
There, over the next five years, Jackson said kindergarten enrollment is expected to continue declining.
Meanwhile, in Maryland, Montgomery County Public Schools reported 4,504 fewer students last year than it had in 2022-23, according to county data. Enrollment has dropped each of the last four school years.
As a result, the division is launching an elementary and middle school boundary study, which will review building capacity and could include scenarios for closing campuses.
Superintendent Thomas Taylor’s recommended school consolidations and closures are expected early next year, according to school board documents.
Nearby Prince George’s County only had 540 fewer students last year compared with 2022, according to its website, but the drop over the last two years has been more significant, from 132,153 kids to 130,603.
And D.C. Public Schools had about 1,400 more kids last year than it did in 2022-23, though it experienced a drop in 2025-26 compared with 2024-25.
In some cases, declining enrollment could lead to less funding, resulting in difficult staffing decisions.
To change the projections over the next five years in Virginia, Jackson said, “The most obvious thing is if we see a sustained increase in the number of children born. That’s the simplest antidote here.”
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