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Colorado’s public school enrollment dropped this year by more than 10,000 students, or 1.2%, marking the biggest drop since the first year of the COVID pandemic in 2020.
The state’s public schools are serving about 871,000 students in preschool through 12th grade, according to the October 2025 enrollment count released Tuesday by the Colorado Department of Education.
This year’s enrollment picture is particularly grim, because the statewide drop is steeper than in the previous few years and because more school districts are facing declines this year compared with 2024. This year, 138 districts or BOCES — Boards of Cooperative Educational Services — have seen enrollment declines, compared with 119 last year.
Much of the decline is driven by a yearslong decrease in birth rates statewide. An increase in the number of homeschooled students is also a factor. At the same time, an increase in immigration that was sustaining enrollment in some districts has tapered off, and some recent arrivals have left Colorado.
Since the state gives school districts money based on how many students they serve, decreasing enrollment means less state funding. It can also force districts to close schools that have too few students to operate efficiently.
In recent years, Denver and Jeffco, the state’s two largest districts, have together closed more than two dozen district-run schools. In addition, 15 Denver charter schools have also closed due to low enrollment.
Earlier this year, the Denver school board enacted a four-year moratorium on enrollment-based school closures. But the moratorium includes a caveat that allows the board to consider closures “if there is a substantial shift in student enrollment, funding levels, or an unexpected emergency.”
Denver lost about 1,200 students from last year to this year and Jeffco lost about 1,300.
The other eight districts among Colorado’s 10 largest all lost students this year, but a couple medium-sized districts gained students. They include Colorado Springs 11 in El Paso County and the Brighton-based District 27J in metro Denver.
Many of Colorado’s gainers this year are rural districts with fewer than 1,000 students. In several cases, these districts gained a dozen students or less.
This year’s enrollment data also shows how the state’s student body is becoming more diverse, with upticks in the percentage of students identified as Black, Asian American, multiracial, and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.
The share of white students is decreasing. Today, white students make up 49% of the state’s public school students, compared with nearly 54% in the 2015-16 school year.
Hispanic students make up a larger share of public school students today than they did a decade ago — 36% compared with 33% — but their numbers have shrunk by about 4,400 students since last year’s peak of 321,000. That peak was largely the result of an influx of immigrant students from South America during the 2023-24 school year. Some of those students have since left Colorado.
Such moves may also help explain the decline in the number of English learners enrolled in the state’s public schools. This year, Colorado has about 99,400 students learning English, down from more than 105,000 last year.
Look up your district’s enrollment changes in the table below:
Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.
