CHIPPEWA VALLEY – All 421 school districts in Wisconsin have seen enrollment declines of about 70% over the past few years.
That’s according to data from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Freedom in 2025. school report cards. According to a Wisconsin Policy Forum report released in 2023. As of October, the number of students in the country fell by more than 2.9% for the 2020-21 academic year, the largest single-year decline in 35 years. Since then, declining enrollment has been a trend for many Wisconsin schools.
While the change has affected schools, many districts have been hopeful by measuring trends in declining birth rates, open enrollment and other factors.
According to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, numbers are collected on the third Friday of September to determine acceptance.
Mark Elworthy, executive director of business services for the Eau Claire Area School District, said enrollment is down 1% from last year to this year.
While this may seem like a small change, it is compounded by declining numbers, and the decline is not evenly distributed across classes. Their largest classes in the 2025-26 school year are senior and fifth grade.
“Next year, that means our elementary schools will be smaller, our middle schools will be smaller, and then the fifth grade will move to the middle school, depending on the size of the schools,” Elworthy said.
“This was expected because the graduating class was large last year. What is the main reason why the school district has declining enrollment? A large class graduates and a small class graduates.”
That’s happening when it comes to growth in Eau Claire, but the numbers don’t necessarily reflect that in the K-12 range. This may be because the population is increasing, but the declining birth rate continues to be a factor limiting the number of school-age children.
While declining enrollment is a cause for concern, it opens the door to additional challenges.
Declining enrollment is also seen in the Altoona school district, but the story changes a bit when looking at community trends.
“What’s happened in Altoona between the residential growth in Altoona and our increased enrollment, Altoona has outpaced the declining birthrate,” Superintendent Heidi Eliopoulos said. “That left us running out of space at our school, so we had a referendum in 2023 to try to add more space so we would have capacity to continue to grow. That referendum didn’t pass, so we had to go to Plan B because we’re a district with a larger open enrollment that allows us to control our growth and control enrollment by closing different student systems.”
“So we’ve been able to manage enrollment a little bit because of capacity issues with open enrollment. There are challenges with that, though, and enrollment or school funding in Wisconsin is based on student enrollment.”
While Altoona’s enrollment has allowed the school to keep up with inflation, Eliopoulos said now, like all other declining enrollments in Wisconsin, they are experiencing the opposite effect.
Elworthy said, “Why yes [enrollment] matter? This is due to funding. Aid is calculated based on the last three years of membership.
During 2024 There were 241 referendums voted in Wisconsin. Referring to ECASD’s own operational referendum, Elworthy said: “By committing to the 2024 referendum, we will be pursuing our priorities. So how do we align our resources with the education and support of students and staff, part of that commitment is to look at all opportunities to provide or improve education. It’s from a financial perspective. Are there any ways to make resources more efficient?”
Overall, school districts’ per-pupil revenue has lagged behind inflation by more than $3,000, according to the Legislative Fiscal Office.
“You lose revenue when your enrollment drops,” Eliopoulos said. “So not only is the income coming in out of line with inflation, but we’re actually losing income.”
“I think that’s why you hear so many school districts talking about declining enrollment and how it’s affecting them because it makes a tough financial situation even more difficult.”
Eliopoulos said there’s a tricky balance in systems that are made up of many parts because not all districts are funded equally. In addition to underfunding and declining student enrollment, she said, it’s creating a perfect storm of challenges for many school districts in the state.
“A lot of the rural districts in West Central Wisconsin and North Wisconsin — we fall into those lower-funded per-pupil funding ranges,” Eliopoulos said. “Decreased enrollment in an already underfunded school district is really hurting rural school districts in our part of the state. And a school district like Altoona that didn’t have to deal with that for so many years because it was getting more and more students … we’re now in those very similar, really tough situations as other school districts in Wisconsin.”