Some school boards have recently rejected their districts’ school closure plans at a time when declining student enrollment continues to plague district budgets nationwide. As districts push for closures amid the dwindling enrollment numbers and budget deficits, board and community members cite needing more time to decide considering the major disruptions to local communities as reasons to keep schools open — for now.
In Pennsylvania, for instance, 6 of 9 board members at Pittsburgh Public Schools voted on Nov. 25 against the district’s proposal to close nine schools by the end of the 2027-28 school year. The vote came a day after the school board held a three-hour public hearing on the possible closures with a majority of speakers denouncing the district’s plan, according to CBS Pittsburgh.
Gene Walker, the board’s president, said during a Nov. 25 meeting that “in the short-term” he would vote against the closures after hearing public feedback on the issue. Walker added that he thinks the board will need more time to decide on closures, especially as several new board members were set to be sworn in the coming days.
“It’s my personal opinion that we are not in a space where we can properly support the superintendent and his team in this work,” Walker said.
The district recommended the school closures as it faces a projected budget deficit of nearly $11.4 million for the 2025-26 school year. Pittsburgh Public Schools also expects its total expenditures to continue to outpace its total revenue in the coming years. If the district closed the nine schools, Pittsburgh Public School administrators said it could have also saved nearly $103 million by 2031.
The district’s enrollment has steadily decreased over the past five years, dipping from 19,159 students to 17,937 between the 2021-22 and 2025-26 school years. Two decades ago, the number of enrolled students was much higher at 32,529, according to the Allegheny Institute, a nonprofit research and education organization.
Pittsburgh Public Schools Superintendent Wayne Walters said in a Wednesday statement to K-12 Dive that he does not fully agree with the “path” the district’s school board is on right now, but he respects its decision and is committed to finding a “responsible, equitable path forward” with board members.
“Without action, we remain a system unable to deliver the consistent academic and enrichment opportunities our children deserve — one where access too often depends on the building a student attends,” Walters said. “At the same time, our financial stability continues to decline as we stretch limited resources across too many buildings.”
Elsewhere, the school board for Alaska’s Anchorage School District rejected plans on Nov. 18 to close two elementary schools. In a board recap post, the district noted that it’s already had to close five schools since 2015 due to lowering student enrollment. While Anchorage School District has the capacity to serve 50,000 students, only 42,000 are currently enrolled, according to the district.
In Wisconsin, the Eau Claire Area School District said in November that it was no longer considering a proposal to consolidate several elementary schools, according to WEAU 13 News.
The district said on its website that it was planning to consolidate the schools as it continues to see elementary enrollment decline because of lower birthrates and demographic shifts.That planning process began earlier this year. An October report from the district’s Superintendent Mike Johnson shows student enrollment has dropped from 10,267 to 9,910 students between the 2017-18 and 2025-26 school years.
Still, Johnson told WEAU 13 News that the enrollment challenges aren’t going away. “For next year, our second largest class in the district is our 5th grade class,” Johnson said. “If the trends occur the way they have been, when those students exit and go to middle school, we’ll be down 110 students.”
The changed course for Eau Claire Area School District came after families organized to push back against the proposed consolidation plans through a “Save Our Neighborhood Schools” campaign.
Under the district’s proposal, the campaign said the closing of a neighborhood school means children would be “split across multiple elementary schools,” families could no longer access a walkable, community school, and property values would drop because without “the appeal of top-tier schools.”
‘A consequence of not confronting the reality’
Closing underenrolled schools “is a deeply painful decision,” said Thomas Dee, a professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education. These schools, in many ways, are “the fabric of communities who often have a kind of focal identity” around these places, he said.
But when underenrolled schools are kept open, Dee said that comes at a higher cost to the district and ultimately to students. By keeping under-capacity schools open, districts have to spend extra money per student to keep the buildings operating, he added. Those additional costs can then translate into less financial resources for other things students benefit from and need districtwide, such as school transportation, diverse course offerings, or smaller class sizes.
“Closing a school is highly visible and painful, but watching needed instructional supports disappear, or watching class sizes grow, watching fewer hours from a school nurse, all of that is less visible but can be a consequence of not confronting the reality,” Dee said.
It’s important that districts choosing to forego closures amid declining enrollment understand those difficult tradeoffs, and that it’s likely this enrollment challenge isn’t going away, he said.
Dee added that school districts could run the risk of a state takeover if they can’t get a hold of their finances. In the case of a state takeover, communities would no longer have agency over how their local schools run, he said.
“The only way to release that tension is for communities to increase their own property taxes or for states to increase aid through higher sales and income taxes,” Dee said.
