Shrink Smart or Suffer: Lessons from the Enrollment Crisis

Empty classrooms can bankrupt a school district faster than almost anyone wants to admit. When enrollment falls, funding falls with it, and suddenly a district built for 20,000 students is trying to survive with half that number while still paying for staff, services, and aging buildings. That’s the reality driving one of the biggest public education challenges in the country right now: declining school enrollment. 

In this follow-up episode on the enrolled We’re joined by Pedro Noguera, Dean of the USC Rossier School of Education, and Rubén Aurelio, superintendent of Vallejo City Unified north of San Francisco, where the board has voted to close several elementary schools as enrollment drops below 10,000 students -- from a high of 23,000 just over two decades ago. 

Noguera drills down on what he calls the “loose coupling” between city governments and school districts and why that disconnect makes it harder to plan for housing affordability, neighborhood change, and the future of public schools. We also explore creative options for underused school sites, from community uses to revenue-generating development and  housing for educators. 

Then we get practical about what families actually experience when schools close, and what leaders must do to make school consolidation or mergers worth it: improve programs, rebuild confidence, and compete with charter schools that often out-market districts and offer strong after-school care for working parents. We also talk candidly about union negotiations, contracts districts can’t afford, and why transparency and early timelines matter when budgets are collapsing. Finally, we look at big policy levers like enrollment-based funding vs funding based on attendance,  and the growing strain of special education costs. 

If you care about public education, school finance, and what keeps families in their neighborhood schools, subscribe, share this episode with a friend, and leave us a review so more listeners can find the show.

Sign up here so we can keep you posted on future podcasts on how education leaders are responding to the mounting threats against public schools In the United States. 

Transcript

Why Enrollment Declines Hit Hard

Louis Freedberg 0:04

Welcome to Education on the Line, a podcast series focused on the latest threats to public education and strategies for confronting them. I'm Louis Friedberg. In this episode, we'll take a deeper look into the pervasive challenge facing many, if not most, school districts in the nation: declining enrollments. Those are driven mainly by lower birth rates, but as we'll discuss in this episode, other factors also come into play, depending on the district. In our last episode, I interviewed two superintendents who have grappled with the issue: Kyla Johnson Tremel, formerly superintendent in Oakland, and Roxanne Fuentes, who is superintendent of the Berriesta Union School District in San Jose. This week I'm pleased to welcome two guests. First, well, he's not really a guest, but he is the initial host and founder of this podcast, Pedro Neguera, Dean of the USC Rossier School of Education. Pedro, as many of you know, is a distinguished scholar and educator. He recently co-authored an article with Alvin Macquarie on declining enrollments that presents a different angle on this very difficult topic. The article was published in the Journal of Urban Education in the April 2026 edition. Welcome, Pedro Negueira.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Great to be with you again, Lewis.

Louis Freedberg 1:29

And I'm also pleased to welcome Rubén Aurelio. He is superintendent of the Vallejo City Unified School District, just north of San Francisco. His school district has had to cope with significant declines in enrollment, and the school board there just voted to close three elementary schools at the end of the current school year. Rubin has been a teacher, a principal. He has served as a superintendent, associate superintendent, chief academic officer, and director of assessment in several other school districts, both small and large. So he brings a wealth of knowledge to our discussion. Welcome, Rubén Aurelio.

SPEAKER_02 2:06

Thank you for having me. Looking forward to our conversation.

Louis Freedberg 2:10

Let me start with you, Pedro. You've just written this article tackling this issue, and we'll just jump into the substance of that. But I just wanted to ask you: to what extent do you think declining enrollment is a major issue in the panoply of challenges facing public schools? Why did you choose to zero in on this issue?

SPEAKER_00 2:29

This is an issue that's been slowly emerging over the last several years, but not gotten a lot of attention. I think the policymakers haven't wanted to confront it. It's going to have implications not just for education, but for our economy, our society, because we have an aging population, a declining birth rate, and the most immediate impact is on schools because our funding is based on attendance. So attendance goes down, and therefore you have less funding for schools. And unfortunately, most schools don't plan to shrink, don't plan to get smaller, even though they can see their numbers themselves. And so you end up with districts that are unable to meet their budget needs because they have a staff that was hired to meet the needs of a much larger population. And then when you combine that with the fact that, you know, cities like LA or or like the Bay Area, the big large uh urban area where the cost of housing is so high, families with children just can't afford to live there. So they're moving out. They're

Loose Coupling Between Cities And Schools

SPEAKER_00 3:30

moving away to either to the suburbs or out of state altogether. So, you know, this confluence of factors has contributed to a financial catastrophe for many districts.

Louis Freedberg 3:41

Well, you've written this article, and I have to read the title because it's a very unusual title. From loose coupling to warm embrace, declining enrollments and the future of urban schools.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

What is this loose coupling that you're referring to? So in in most cities, by design, the school system operates separately from the city. The Board of Ed appoints a superintendent like Ruben, and the mayor and city council operate as though they're just two separate entities. Even though we know, in fact, they're interdependent. The quality of schools affect property values, affect quality of life for people in cities. But because the two entities tend to function separately, they don't plan together, they don't think about how life in that city and that community is affected by what's happening in the schools. So I in the paper we talk about Los Sanders and Inglewood. Now, Inglewood is really interesting because Inglewood is a burgeoning city. It's got SoFi Stadium, it's got the Intuit Dome, it's gonna be home to the Olympics and the World Cup right near LA. And it has a district that has gone from 18,000 kids 12 years ago to about 7,000 kids and still shrinking now, which means it's in free fall. And during that time, it's been under the state's control. And so you would think that the state should look at these trends and think about okay, well, how do we help the kids that are remaining in Inglewood to get a good education? The resources are there in Inglewood to help kids, help schools, but because of this disconnect, this loose coupling, there's a sense that the city has no responsibility, even though it has such bearing on quality of life in that city.

Louis Freedberg 5:28

What should or could cities be doing or the communities in which these districts are based? Could they be doing more than they are doing now to help school districts get through which they have no control over?

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Definitely. So I'll give you an example. Elk Grove, a right outside of Sacramento, one of the few school districts in the state that is still growing. Now it's growing because of housing. There's new affordable housing coming into Elk Grove, but if you look at the way that the the local that it's several cities actually that contribute to that district, they're working together with the school district to plan for growth and to plan and promote the need for the public to support the public schools. And I would say that if you there are other places around the country where what we're seeing is cities work with the school district to plan so that when schools must close, we are developing new housing, we're developing using those sites to benefit the community, whether it be for parks and recreation in Portland, Oregon, there's a hotel at a former school site. That hotel brings revenue to the school system, okay? Because it's on leased land that the district used to own. So if you get creative and you say, okay, we're not gonna need all these buildings, what else can we do with those buildings? In Los Angeles, where there's a critical need for housing, particularly for civil servants and teachers, LA Unified is one of the largest landowners in the city of LA. And they have property that is unused. They could be developing that

Vallejo’s Enrollment Slide Explained

SPEAKER_00 7:05

property for teachers and for other workers. Because we're not going to produce more kids. So that's not the solution. The solution is shrink in a wise and intelligent way and make good use of the property for other purposes to support the school system.

Louis Freedberg 7:20

Well, let's just use that as a jumping-off point to bring in Superintendent Rubin Aurelio. He is superintendent of the Vallejo City Unified School District, just north of San Francisco. Looking at the numbers, your district has suffered from significant declines. In 2015-16, there were 14,700 students. Now, this year there's about 12,000 students. A big decline. Why has that happened?

SPEAKER_02 7:46

It's actually more severe than that. We're actually at 9,600 students, and this has been happening for many years, not just prior to COVID. This district at one point, it's very similar to Inglewood, which was just highlighted. We had over 23,000 students once in Baleo City Unified, and now they're below 10,000. And it's a combination of factors. I did get a chance to read Noguerra's article. There's a lot of points there that I really agree with. It is multifaceted, it is declining birth rates, but that's not the only factor. Over the past couple years, especially since we've had a change in administration and the federal government, we've seen impacts on immigration and students who are joining us from other countries. That has decreased the number of enrollments. We also are competing against uh public charter school systems that have come into, especially neighborhoods like Vallejo, low-income neighborhoods where charters pop up. You know, as I try to right-size my district, I put myself as targets of more charter schools. As we open up a property, then you know, another school sets up shop. And so now we're competing against a public charter system that also serves our students. And then the third factor, I lose considerable number of students to neighboring school districts as part of the interdistrict transfer process. A process that, for at least for my district for many years, went unchecked. And so that is another area that I'm looking to tackle in Vallejo City Unified is to keep the students that reside within our district. 14,000 students didn't disappear overnight. And why aren't they choosing our district? That's what I'm trying to address here as well.

Louis Freedberg 9:31

Your district was one of the few in the state that had to get a bailout 20 years ago. And now you're more or less paid off that loan, but still I gather you're operating under a deficit. Apropos what Pedro Negero were saying, how much help are you getting from the city of Vallejo or the surrounding community? Do you feel you're in this on your own, more or less? You and your school board?

SPEAKER_02 9:55

I think it's a mixed bag. There has been strides here in Vallejo. We have what's called a two plus two committee, where I have two sitting board members that meet monthly with two council members. In fact, the mayor sits on that right now. It is a committee where we have clear discussions and strategize and plan for the youth in the community. I'll give you an example of a project that we've worked on together at one of our main high schools, Vallejo High School. The road in front of the high school has been pretty problematic over the years. That resulted if about four years ago in a shooting that occurred in front of the school that injured our site safety personnel was shot. And, you know, people would speed down that road. There'd be so much just impact. And two and a half years ago, as part of this two plus two committee with the city, we commissioned a study on closing that street during the school day, you know, putting up temporary gates to close it off, and did a whole bunch of studying on what that did to the traffic and the safety. And it was overwhelming the impact it had positively on the school and the students. And so we've moved now to a point where we're actually going to put up physical barriers in partnership with the city. The city's doing this work. And that really stemmed from that communication partner.

Louis Freedberg 11:17

What about funding for programs that you can't cover?

SPEAKER_02 11:21

We're on our own on that one. The city has their own challenges with funding. Quite honestly, I think we we might be in better shape sometimes than the city itself.

Louis Freedberg 11:29

Your board just last month voted to close three schools. Any words of advice for others school leaders who are going through this to how to traverse this very difficult landscape?

SPEAKER_02 11:43

Aaron Powell It's probably the most challenging thing you can do as a school leader and a board because it's not the first thing we want to do. This is year two for me in the district. In my first year, I knew that we had some right sizing to do. I commissioned a study of all our districts space and really, really put a number to it. What was our capacity and what were we serving? And in my first year, we realized that we were uh essentially serving about 45% capacity. So we could have doubled in size and still had space for students. And

School Closures And Community Fallout

SPEAKER_02 12:20

that's not sustainable. It's not sustainable operationally when you're running a multi-million dollar organization. Can you imagine saying you're only going to be at 45% capacity? Well, you'd get shut down if that was the case. So we knew we had to close some schools, and we did close two schools my first year. Now, those two were a little easier of a choice because two of them were literally physically right next door to each other. So it's a sort of a consolidation. This year, however, we are closing three additional schools, so five schools in the short span of two years. We predict that that will be enough and be the end of school closures for a while, as long as we've you know stopped the bleed when it comes to our declining enrollment. So we are consolidating, we're redrawing the boundaries, but we're also being mindful that for some of these communities we have to increase our transportation.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

Lewis, can I jump in for a moment? Yeah, so I want to talk about this issue of declining black enrollment, because that's not just Vallejo, that's happening all over the state. And it's driven by the poor performance of public schools. Black families, like white families, will not put their kids in schools that are not served well. And if you look at Sacramento, for example, where a disproportionate number of black children now in charter schools compared to the public schools, they're outperforming. The charters are outperforming the public schools. And so I think it's not good enough to just say we're going to try to recoup people back. You have to make the schools better. Think about how I don't know what the numbers are like in Vallejo. How many white families put their kids in public school in Balao? I would imagine it's very low. And they're not going to send their kids there unless those are good schools. And so the challenge I think facing the districts is they've got to shrink and improve at the same time. But that's why consolidating schools is necessary, because if you try to spread the same resources out over the same number of schools, you just don't have it. I I point out that right here in Los Angeles, within two miles of USC, there are seven high schools that are all underenrolled, built for 2,000 kids and have less than 500 kids now. There should only be two high schools, and those schools could be magnet schools with strong arts and STEM programs that will be attractive to the community, and it would compensate for the sense of loss. Because if you lose a school but you're gaining something better, it's an easier way to present that to community than simply say, oh, we're going to shut down your school now that we have an abandoned school in your neighborhood.

SPEAKER_02 14:52

And you make a really important point, and that was something I stressed as we were doing school closures. I didn't just want to say it was right sizing. I said we are optimizing the programs we offer. And part of that was concentrating those resources because we know if we have a I have a school that I'm closing that has 105 students in it. 105 students in one school is not sustainable. And the the amount of resources it takes to man that one school could be used at a different school.

Louis Freedberg 15:19

Aaron Powell But were you able to convince people of that reality? Because I have seen it, I know in Oakland, Kyle Johnson Tremell is now no longer superintendent, she'd argue you're gonna get better schools. But it's counterintuitive, you're closing schools to have better schools. But were you able to get your message across?

SPEAKER_02 15:38

I believe we did get the message across, but of course, like I said, anytime you close a school, it's a mixed bag. You're gonna have families who are upset, you're gonna have families who are pained, there's a lot of history. Some of these schools go back decades plus. Some of these schools are named after local heroes. I mean, there there's so much that goes into these schools that you close a school, you consolidate, makes perfect sense. And you can explain that to your blue in the face. But in the end, my five-year-old no longer has their school. And that one, you're going to have pain and you're gonna have anger associated with that until you can prove, like Pedro says, that what they're getting is better.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

But here's something that we could take from the charter schools. The charter schools, most of the charter schools provide after-school care on site. So for working parents, they don't have to worry, where's my kid gonna go at three o'clock? Their schools open until 5 30, 6 o'clock. So that's where a partnership with the city should come in. The city might say, okay, we'll run your after-school programs because we want kids to be in a safe place too, after school. And let's get Parks and Rec working with schools to do some things. So it does take planning, but I do think we're better off working together than pretending that the interests of the schools and the interests of the city are not interrelated.

SPEAKER_02 16:57

Part of it is also marketing. We get beat in marketing by by charter schools all the time. And if something we've been trying to do very strategically and intentionally in Vallejo is to tell our story. We have before school and aftercare. You could theoretically drop a student off at a school by 6:30 in the morning and pick them up at 6 p.m. for free in Vallejo. I mean, that is significant. And we do partner with our greater Vallejo Recreation District. They run some of our after-school programming. One thing I think the state has done well is contribute dollars to expanded learning programming. And those we benefit from and we use those tremendously to offer care till six o'clock at every one of our elementary and middle schools. So there is some real benefit. But it's telling our story, it's marketing. We do get beat in marketing. How many of our urban districts spend significant dollars on their communications team? There's value in that. And we've committed funding in that because we know if we're going to compete. I think our schools are better than the charter schools that are in town here. And you can look at the data, and we do hold up. And we do hold up even for African American students. But who's telling that story?

Louis Freedberg 18:09

Let me

Charters, After-School Care, And Marketing

Louis Freedberg 18:10

ask you, uh, Pedro Nagera. One factor that I've seen in many districts is that particularly unions' jobs are to protect jobs, basically. And what I've seen in district after district is where the union representatives just even refuse to accept that there's declining enrollment or that the school district isn't a budget problem. To what extent is that a challenge or a problem?

SPEAKER_00 18:37

It's a huge challenge. LA Unified just approved a contract they can't afford. You know, they promised huge increases. And let's be clear, the teachers and the staff deserve it because the costs are literally so high. But where's the money coming from in a district that's declining and that's gonna have less revenue? So we're not having an honest conversation about where we are and what the future holds. And I think it doesn't portend well for our school system around the State. I'm hoping the next governor will take this issue seriously and really think about what it means to be in a state with a declining birth rate and how that's gonna affect the long-term prospects for the State, not just in education, but in everything. Think about it. Aging population is more costly to support. Who's gonna take care of, especially since a lot of the immigrant care workers are being driven out of the State?

Louis Freedberg 19:29

Well, let me ask you about that and uh Rabin Aurelia, what do you think can be done so that this union district, how shall I say, war that goes on every time a contract is up for negotiation is so fractious that we can't get people on the same page to just to agree on the numbers?

SPEAKER_02 19:50

So I would say one thing here in Baleo. With my teachers union, we have a great relationship. We are still negotiating our contract, but we had an agreement basically at the start of the school year, I forecasted very transparently what was the structural deficit. So from day one in August, I said, I will be closing schools and I will be reducing staffing. And at that point in August, I said, it's looking like 30% of our employees. 30%. That's what I was predicting that we would probably reduce going into the following year. And I stayed true to those words throughout. So there was transparency with our labor units. They knew it was coming. I also said that by December, I will have the initial cuts and I will have the initial decisions on the schools. So I wanted to give a long lead time because I think that's respectful to our employees. So they knew that potentially certain jobs are going to be on the chopping block because I wanted them to have the biggest advantage when new jobs came available. And we held to that. We held to that timeline. The board held to the timeline because it's the respectful thing to do. We also agreed that we were not going to talk about salary and benefits until after we get through these cuts and after we know what our budget's going to look like for next year. So we've been able to agree, especially with our teachers, on almost every single article we have open, except for salary and benefits, which we have held off on doing so because of that. So we anticipated this challenge. We also know that across the state, benefits is a big factor. People want better benefits.

Louis Freedberg 21:23

I just wanted to just ask Pedro Neguerra, because you are Rubin, you run a district less than 10,000 students. I've seen in the smaller districts, maybe the communication is better. The conflicts aren't as intense. But you look at LAUSD with 500,000 students, the conflicts seem more intense. Any thoughts on these large districts where things get so fractious?

Union Contracts And The Need For Candor

SPEAKER_00 21:50

It's really unfortunate. I I remember watching in Oakland when you had teachers taking over buildings that were almost empty, saying, Don't close these schools. There was a sit-in. And meanwhile, Uh the kids are not there. So and now they're recognizing, guess what? We can't afford to keep these empty buildings open anymore. I think adults have to be willing to face up to the facts of the hand we've been dealt and figure out what's the best strategy forward. And we need leadership, I think, at the local and the state level to develop strategies that are going to work in the interest of our communities because these are complex issues. There are no simple solutions. But we are going to see as the population declines, the workforce will also have to decline.

SPEAKER_02 22:34

And Lewis, I if I can go back to something you had asked earlier about the school closures and how, you know, if I had a playbook or advice, one is we did a lot of communication, not just with our parent groups, but with our internal groups. So we not only did town halls for our communities that were going to be impacted, but we did town halls for our employees. We had town halls just tailored to our classified employees, our certificated employees. We're literally to ask myself or the cabinet any question you wanted to ask. We also on our website have a feature that we did for the community to ask any question of the district. And it we post the question and the answers to those questions because we know we have to deal with the rumors, we have to deal with the miscommunication. So we're trying to provide every avenue. We did town halls strictly in Spanish. I'm a bilingual uh superintendent. We invited everyone. So parents who are English, monolingual English speakers, they had to wear the headsets and listen to the translation instead of the other way around.

Louis Freedberg 23:39

Those are all good practices at the same time. I've seen in other school districts, superintendents have tried to do that, and it hasn't really worked. So there's a multiple factors go into it. The face-to-face communication seems to be key.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

And don't forget the board. The board is key. I can't do the things I'm doing if my board is split, if my board is not with me, or if my board is going to cave anytime they get any pressure. I have a board that understands the assignment. They understand what we're looking at, the face of the district's budget scenario. They know what it means to go back into state receivership. They know what it means to have to borrow millions of dollars to keep the lights on. And we're not going back.

Louis Freedberg 24:25

Every state other than North Dakota is experiencing declining enrollments. Many of those states, the governors are intensively involved in education. Surprises me there hasn't been more discussion in the gubernatorial race here in California about what governors are going to be doing. Education should be front and center in this race. You are pushing for local governments to really get more engaged with the schools and with this problem. Any last thoughts on that issue?

SPEAKER_00 24:57

In California, we have this split government between the school system and the city. But in places like New York and Chicago and Boston, where the mayor controls the schools, you're not seeing even better approaches. And I think it's because in this country we're not good at planning for the future. We just don't we we take a short-term look at things. And that's why an issue like this is so problematic,

Fixing Funding, ADA, And Special Ed

SPEAKER_00 25:20

because you can see the trends, you can see the birth rates, and you can know that we will have fewer children and that we will have this aging population. But we don't see Congress planning for it. We don't see this happening anywhere. And so we deal with the consequence of not planning, then you're forced to make decisions under pressure, and often those are not the wisest decisions.

Louis Freedberg 25:43

Rubena Raleigh, our last thought from you. What could you use help on? If you're looking to local government, state government, where do you need help to deal with this issue?

SPEAKER_02 25:54

For my district in particular, the funding model needs to be adjusted. I know there's energy around enrollment versus ADA.

Louis Freedberg 26:01

Getting paid for the number of students who are enrolled rather than the ones who are sitting in the classroom on a daily basis. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 26:07

Correct. You know, I have high immigrant students, so when Trump went into office, our attendance took a dip, a significant dip. We have families who are just trying to find somewhere to sleep in the evenings and trying to get their kids to school. So we have real impacts in ensuring our students get to school. And then we're penalized, of course, when they don't go to school financially. The other factor is special education. As students who have a choice to either go charter or go private, parochial, many of those students who are leaving us aren't the students who have special needs. And so then we have a concentrated need at our district less resources, greater percentage of students. Special education makes up close to 30% of my budget. Those students only make up about 15% of my population. But yet 30% of the budget is going to serve those students. So there's a disadvantage, right? And then that factor needs to be considered as well. Federal government is not fully funding special education. They haven't, ever, I don't think. And that needs to be addressed on top of just looking at ADA and enrollment.

Louis Freedberg 27:26

We've been talking with Superintendent Rubin Aurelio, who is the superintendent of the Vallejo City Unified School District. Thank you for having me. I also want to thank Pedro Naguerra, Dean of the USC Rossi School of Education, for joining us today. Good to see you, Lewis. On that note, we need to bring this episode of Education on the Line to a close. Our producer is Kobe McDonald. Please subscribe to Education on the Line wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lewis Friedberg. Thanks for listening.