Enrollment at Wichita public schools dropped by nearly 1,500 students this year, continuing a trend that prompted school closures and reflects a nationwide decline in birth rates and the number of school-age children.
Wichita’s total headcount for the 2025-26 school year is 45,075, down from 46,556 last year. The state’s largest district has lost about 6,000 students — a nearly 12% drop — over the past decade.
District leaders say the drop was expected and is not happening only in Wichita.
“Our demographers were already telling us that we were expecting declines,” said Fabian Armendariz, director of operations for the Wichita district. “They haven’t been as deep as they projected, but we were expecting to be in the declining-enrollment environment.”
Each year on Sept. 20, or the nearest school day, students statewide are counted for their school’s official enrollment. The number is used to determine the district’s state funding for the school year — this year, $5,378 in base state aid for every full-time student.
Armendariz said one reason for the decline could be a recent federal crackdown on immigration, which has meant fewer refugee families in the Wichita area.
The district’s Newcomer program, which serves recent immigrants and refugees, dropped to 930 students this year, down from 1,152 students last fall.
The Wichita district’s demographics continue to shift toward more racial and ethnic diversity. This school year, the district is 39.6% Hispanic, 26.8% white, 19.7% Black and 8.4% multiracial.
Over the past 25 years, the percentage of Hispanic students in Wichita schools has almost tripled — from 15 percent in the 2000-01 school year to nearly 40 percent today.
Wichita’s facility master plan calls for closing four elementary schools — L’Ouverture, OK, Pleasant Valley and Woodland — because leaders say the buildings are inefficient and too costly to repair.
Armendariz said declining enrollment could prompt other consolidations as well.
“We have to be honest: If enrollment continues to decline … we’re going to have to look at the number of schools we have to operate efficiently,” he said. “And operating efficiently means we can’t have a whole bunch of schools with a lot of empty classrooms, or half full.”
The National Center for Education Statistics predicts that public school enrollment across the country will continue to decline over the next decade, reflecting lower birth rates, shifting housing patterns and growth in private and homeschooling.
Armendariz said it’s hard to tell precisely how much a new statewide open enrollment law has affected Wichita’s enrollment. The law, passed in 2022, lets Kansas students attend schools outside the districts where they live, as long as there is space available.
This school year, Wichita gained 1,557 students and lost about 2,400 from people switching districts. But that number includes children who move into or out of the district as well as those who take advantage of the open-enrollment law.
In February, Wichita voters narrowly rejected a $450 million bond issue that would have financed school construction and other improvements. The plan was designed to reduce the district’s overall footprint and make it more efficient.
Since then, district leaders have been searching for a plan to address aging buildings and declining enrollment. In July, school board members gave their initial, informal go-ahead to a plan that would seek another bond vote in November 2026.
Suzanne Perez reports on education for KMUW in Wichita and the Kansas News Service.
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