Dive Brief:
- The Hawaii Department of Education will consider alternatives to school consolidation, such as redistricting, before state leaders more seriously eye consolidation plans, according to the state board of education agenda released Thursday.
- The move comes as student enrollment continues to decline in Hawaii — dropping from 174,704 to 163,651 between the 2020-21 and 2025-26 school years, according to state education department data.
- The state will now spend the 2026-27 school year exploring and implementing a redistricting plan. The department still plans to conduct a school consolidation study after that, and a potential transition for consolidating schools could start as soon as July 2028.
Dive Insight:
Hawaii’s student enrollment declines are consistent with a drop in birthrates and migration trends in the state, according to the Thursday update from Tammi Oyadomari-Chun, deputy superintendent of strategy and administration at the Hawaii Education Department.
Because of this enrollment trend, the state’s administrative rules require the department to begin studying whether a school should be consolidated under certain circumstances, Oyadomari-Chun wrote.
The Hawaii Board of Education was set to decide this fall whether to conduct a study on schools that could be consolidated, but that changed after meeting with school and district leaders earlier this year.
School and district officials pointed out during the department's outreach efforts that redistricting may be necessary, given that some Hawaii schools are approaching maximum capacity, she said.
That feedback prompted the department to adjust its timeline for potential consolidation plans, and the department is instead revising its approach for addressing the enrollment shifts by first analyzing current data and future enrollment projections, as well as school capacities.
Hawaii’s move to delay consolidation comes at a time when other school districts nationwide are seriously considering merging or closing schools as they face declining enrollment.
For instance, Arizona’s Kyrene School District is looking to close eight of its 25 schools by the end of the 2028-29 school year amid an ongoing drop in enrollment. A ninth school would be repurposed into a gifted academy.
A much larger district — Atlanta Public Schools — also said recently that it could repurpose up to 17 schools as it serves just 50,000 students in 87 schools with a total capacity of 70,000 seats.
Other ways that some districts are navigating having fewer students include reassigning teacher positions, like in Florida’s Orange County Public Schools. Education economics researchers also foresee that layoffs and hiring freezes may be necessary as districts grapple with increasing budget strains — particularly as public schools’ finances rely on per pupil funding.
Additionally, an August analysis from Bellwether, a national education nonprofit, projected that school closures and consolidations nationwide could occur more frequently within the coming months and years due to falling enrollment trends. The study also found that despite drops in funding and enrollment for most districts, very few are closing school buildings that are expensive to maintain when under capacity.
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