Kelly Gonez, a longtime school board member in the Los Angeles Unified School District, says public school enrollment declines worsened after ICE raids escalated in the city in 2025.District officials say low birth rates and the loss of immigrant children in classrooms mean school campuses will likely have to close.
Carlos Jaramillo for NPR hide caption Catch up on what you missed with our Education newsletter, sent weekly.LOS ANGELES — Long before the Trump administration started deporting hundreds of thousands of immigrants, many with school-age children, public schools nationwide faced a massive and accelerating drop in student enrollment caused mostly by shrinking families."Birth rates here in Los Angeles County have been declining for decades, which means fewer children enrolled in our schools," said Kelly Gonez, a board member in the LA Unified School District (LAUSD), the second largest in the country, which lost more than 300,000 students over the last two decades.LA isn't alone.The population of children under age 18 began to fall nationwide after 2010, according to U.S.
Census data, dropping by roughly 2.1 million kids through 2025.With public schools in much of the country facing a demographic cliff, the Trump administration last year began detaining and expelling large numbers of foreign residents.
A study by the Migration Policy Institute found as many as 1.9 million people left the U.S.during the first 18 months of Trump's second term.As part of the crackdown effort, federal officials weakened restrictions that prevented ICE agents from operating near public schools.
"Many of our families immediately went into hiding," Gonez said."We were predicting a 2% drop in enrollment.
It was double that." Researchers who study education and population trends aren't surprised.This is the first time in nearly a century, since the era ...