Dive Brief:
- New Orleans’ birthrate has declined steadily since Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005, reaching a record-low in 2024 and fueling ongoing concerns over the city’s public school enrollment, according to an analysis by nonprofit New Schools for New Orleans.
- Between 2005 and 2006, the under-18 population in New Orleans dropped from 113,134 to 36,879 children and teens, the February report found. While that number began to rebound to 79,358 in 2015, the youth population has since fallen 11% to 70,770 in 2024.
- While enrollment in NOLA Public Schools has decreased from 49,071 to 44,808 students between the 2019-20 and 2025-26 school years, New Schools for New Orleans projects that figure will drop another 8.6% — or roughly 4,250 students — by the 2029-30 school year.
Dive Insight:
Despite NOLA Public Schools’ shrinking enrollment, New Schools for New Orleans sees a silver lining: Closures and consolidations since the 2021-22 school year have provided an opportunity to eliminate both low-quality facilities and low-performing schools, the nonprofit’s report said.
Between the 2021-22 and 2025-26 school years, the district has closed or consolidated nine K-8 schools, which New Schools for New Orleans said has helped improve physical learning environments. Notably, the report said, 3,000 more students are attending classes in high-quality school buildings compared to the 2021-22 school year.
NOLA Public Schools also closed or consolidated five high schools from 2021-22 to 2025-26. Shuttering low-performing schools has helped the district improve academic outcomes, the report added.
“Research by Tulane University’s Education Research Alliance for New Orleans demonstrates that New Orleans’ significant academic gains in the first ten years after Hurricane Katrina were largely due to the closure of low-performing schools,” New Schools for New Orleans’ report said.
Additionally, the report suggested that the district's closure and consolidation of 11 failing schools in the years shortly after COVID-19 contributed to its postpandemic recovery. “In the next few years, it is possible — through additional closures of low-performing schools — to cut the number of students attending K-8 D and F schools nearly in half (at a minimum).”
The report’s findings on declining enrollment and birth rates in New Orleans highlight a broader challenge districts nationwide are grappling with, leading school boards to ultimately close and consolidate some schools as a result.
The report also demonstrates the unique enrollment challenges that districts can face after families are displaced by a severe natural disaster — even decades later. New Schools for New Orleans, for instance, found that the city has a quarter fewer people than it did before Hurricane Katrina, including a smaller share of children. On top of that, the birth rate has steadily declined since that time.
NOLA Public Schools saw a slight enrollment boost in 2024, most likely because of a one-year surge in international immigrants moving into Louisiana and New Orleans, the report said. However, the nonprofit said this year’s enrollment decline and anecdotal evidence signal that many immigrant families are possibly starting to leave New Orleans.
While school choice policies increasingly contribute to enrollment declines in public schools, New Schools for New Orleans said that’s not the case for NOLA Public Schools. In 2025, nonpublic school enrollment in the Orleans Parish fell to 14,964 students — the lowest figure since at least 2010 — which is also part of an ongoing long-term trend.
“This suggests that family preferences have not shifted in a significant way over the past five years, but instead, the losses in both sectors is primarily a function of fewer students and children in the city overall,” the report said.
