Jefferson County - EdTribune AL - Alabama Education Data

Huntsville's Chronic Absenteeism Is Now Lower Than Before COVID: A Rare Success Story

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Huntsville City Schools brought chronic absenteeism below its pre-pandemic level in 2024-25. Among Alabama districts with comparable published records, 55 of 137, or 40%, were at or below their 2018-19 rates.

The district's rate dropped to 8.23% in 2024-25, well below its pre-COVID baseline of 11.41% from 2018-19. That 3.18 percentage point improvement beyond the baseline came after three consecutive years of decline from a COVID peak of 18.84% in 2021-22.

In a state where most districts are still fighting to get back to pre-pandemic levels, Huntsville has already moved past that benchmark and kept going.

Three years of steady progress

Huntsville's recovery has been gradual and consistent rather than dramatic. After peaking at 18.84% in 2021-22, the rate declined each year: 18.11% in 2022-23, 13.35% in 2023-24, 8.23% in 2024-25. The first of those steps was small, less than a point, and the two that followed were close to 5 points each.

Huntsville sustained its decline for three straight years, and its 2024-25 rate of 8.23% is the lowest the district has recorded in any year the state has published. This comparison begins in 2018-19; the state data used here have no chronic-absence figures for 2019-20.

Asked what changed after the 2021-22 peak, the district described a change in method rather than a new program. Huntsville City Schools "strengthened its overall attendance framework and moved toward a more proactive, data-driven approach," Ms. Jasmine Green, the district's student welfare coordinator, said in a written statement provided by the school system. "We increased our focus on early identification and intervention rather than waiting until attendance concerns became severe."

Schools review attendance data on a regular cycle and flag students who are beginning to slip. Attendance Task Force teams, Ms. Green wrote, "provide a structured opportunity for school personnel to review individual student needs, identify barriers contributing to absences, and determine appropriate interventions." Cases that need more than a conversation at school go to social workers, who take on barriers that "may include transportation, housing instability, health concerns, family circumstances, or other challenges affecting regular school attendance." Ms. Green described the job as a shared one: "Administrators, teachers, counselors, social workers, nurses, families, and community partners all have a role."

Nearly every student group improved beyond 2018-19

The most striking aspect of Huntsville's recovery is that it extends across almost every student group. Eight of the ten groups the state reports for the district are now below their pre-COVID rates:

Students receiving special education services improved the most, dropping from 16.38% in 2018-19 to 7.75% in 2024-25, an 8.63 percentage point improvement that leaves them below the statewide rate for every group Alabama tracks except Asian students. The rate for students who are economically disadvantaged fell from 16.75% to 11.21%, a 5.54-point improvement. Black students went from 14.49% to 9.56%.

Two groups did not recover. The rate for students learning English rose from 6.67% in 2018-19 to 7.53% in 2024-25, a 0.86 percentage point increase, and Pacific Islander students rose from 10.11% to 11.59%, up 1.48 points. Both changes are small in absolute terms, and 7.53% is still among the lower group rates in the district. Huntsville's English learner enrollment grew over the same period from 1,420 students to 2,441, from about 6% of the district to about 11%, so the group being measured in 2024-25 is substantially larger than the one measured in 2018-19. The Pacific Islander group numbered 105 students in 2024-25, small enough that a handful of students moves the rate by a full point.

Asked whether the district had more to say about that group, Ms. Green sent a second written statement. As Huntsville welcomes "more multilingual and newly arrived families, we are working closely with our ESOL Department and EL Parent Liaisons to identify and address barriers that may impact regular school attendance," she wrote. The liaisons, in her account, "play an important role in helping families navigate the school system, understand attendance expectations and procedures, overcome language and cultural barriers, and connect with needed resources." That collaboration, she wrote, "allows us to provide more targeted support to newly arrived families while continuing to monitor attendance trends within our growing English learner population."

The statement describes an approach rather than a result. The group's rate remains above its 2018-19 level, and these data cannot say what the district's work with families who are new to Huntsville has or has not changed.

Among large districts, a standout

Only five of Alabama's ten largest districts by enrollment have recovered to pre-COVID chronic absenteeism levels. Huntsville's improvement of 3.18 percentage points beyond baseline ranks third among those ten, behind Birmingham City (6.35 points below its 2018-19 rate) and Limestone County (4.01 points).

The contrast with its geographic neighbor is stark. Madison County^↗, which borders Huntsville^↗, has seen its rate worsen by 5.61 percentage points above its 2018-19 baseline, rising from 8.74% to 14.35%. Two adjacent communities, with the city system outperforming the surrounding county by nearly 9 percentage points relative to their respective starting points.

Jefferson County^↗ sits 6.50 points above its pre-COVID rate. Montgomery County^↗ is 13.34 points above. Against this backdrop, Huntsville's trajectory represents one of the clearest success stories in Alabama attendance data.

What it means at 8.23%

Applied to Huntsville City Schools' published 2024-25 enrollment of 22,776, the 8.23% rate implies roughly 1,900 students who were chronically absent. This is a computed approximation, rather than a published headcount. It is not zero, and two groups sit above the district's overall figure: Black students at 9.56% and economically disadvantaged students at 11.21%. Both are nonetheless well below the statewide rates for those same groups, which were 14.47% and 15.31% in 2024-25.

The district's own account of what sits behind that number is about diagnosis more than enforcement. Families respond best when the approach is "supportive, individualized, and focused on problem-solving," Ms. Green wrote. "A letter or notification may begin the conversation, but direct contact with a family often helps us better understand why a student is missing school."

The districts also serve different student populations. In 2024-25 the state classified 52.7% of Huntsville's students as economically disadvantaged, against 76.7% in Montgomery County and 84.5% in Birmingham^↗ City. These figures describe the students the state classified in each district; they do not isolate the effect of a school system's attendance practices.

The three annual declines document progress. The data do not establish which attendance practices caused it. Ms. Green put the district's aim this way: "Our goal is not simply to tell families that attendance is important; it is to identify what may be preventing a student from attending and determine what support can help that student return to school consistently."

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Montgomery County Cut Chronic Absence in 2024-25 but Remained Above 25%

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Correction: An earlier draft described the observed reporting span as the last four school years. This version names the years and treats 2024-25 as the most recent published data.

Montgomery County's chronic absenteeism rate fell 3.25 percentage points in 2024-25. Its 25.29% rate remained the highest among Alabama districts enrolling more than 10,000 students, and it has been above 25% in each of the four reporting years from 2021-22 through 2024-25.

The district's rate stood at 25.29% in 2024-25, more than double the statewide 12.05%. That is down from 28.54% the year before, an improvement of 3.25 percentage points that slightly outpaced the state's 2.79-point improvement over the same year. Across those four reporting years, the endpoint changed by 0.53 points, while the annual rates varied: 25.82% in 2021-22, 26.33% in 2022-23, 28.54% in 2023-24, and 25.29% in 2024-25, a net change of about half a percentage point.

Elsewhere the change has been much larger. Mobile County^↗ went from 30.93% to 12.81%, a drop of 18.1 points. Birmingham City^↗ fell 15.9 points, to 13.16%. Huntsville City^↗ is now at 8.23%, below the 11.41% it recorded in 2018-19.

The widening gap

Before the pandemic, Montgomery County^↗'s attendance figures were close to the statewide picture. Its 2018-19 rate of 11.95% sat 0.78 points above the state's 11.17%.

Chronic absenteeism rose sharply across Alabama in 2021-22. Montgomery's rate reached 25.82%, but so did Mobile's (30.93%) and Birmingham's (29.09%). The difference is what came next.

The gap between Montgomery and the state has widened from 0.78 points in 2018-19 to 13.24 points in 2024-25. Montgomery's rate is now more than twice the statewide figure, a disparity that did not exist before the pandemic.

This comparison begins in 2018-19. Alabama does not publish a 2019-20 figure in the data used here, and the panel resumes with 2020-21.

Among large districts

Fourteen Alabama districts enrolled more than 10,000 students in 2024-25. Montgomery has the highest chronic absenteeism rate of the fourteen, at 25.29%, more than 8 points clear of the next highest, Jefferson County^↗ at 16.97%.

Montgomery is also furthest from its own pre-pandemic level. It sits 13.34 points above its 2018-19 rate. The next largest such gap belongs to Jefferson County, at 6.50 points, and nine of the fourteen remain above where they were in 2018-19.

Nine of the fourteen large districts remained above their own 2018-19 rates in 2024-25, so recovery was uneven across the comparison group.

Those comparisons start from very different places. Shelby County^↗'s 0.54-point decline began at 11.59%, near the state average at the time. Madison County^↗ rose from 9.70% to 14.35%, which is still nearly 11 points below Montgomery's level. Montgomery began the span at 25.82%.

Inside the numbers

Within Montgomery, chronic absenteeism varies widely from one student group to another.

Students who are economically disadvantaged and students who receive special education services share the highest rate, both at 29.0%. Black students are at 28.2%. Nine of the ten student groups the state reports separately for Montgomery sit above the statewide all-student rate of 12.05%, including white students at 13.1% and English learners at 17.4%. The exception is Asian students, at 3.5%, who are below both the state's all-student rate and the state's rate for Asian students of 3.9%.

The published rates are elevated across several student groups. These outcome data do not establish a cause.

Thirteen percentage points above pre-pandemic

Montgomery County sits 13.34 percentage points above its 2018-19 rate of 11.95%. Statewide, the corresponding figure is 0.88 points.

The state improved by 2.79 points from 2023-24 to 2024-25. Montgomery improved by 3.25 points during that interval, but its published rate remained 13.34 points above its 2018-19 level.

Chronic-absence rates come from the Alabama State Department of Education’s Federal Report Card.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Mobile County Cut Chronic Absenteeism by More Than Half in Two Years

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In 2022-23, nearly one in three Mobile County students was chronically absent. Two years later, in 2024-25, it was closer to one in eight.

Alabama's largest school system reduced its chronic absenteeism rate from 31.54% in 2022-23 to 12.81% in 2024-25, an improvement of 18.73 percentage points, cutting the rate by 59.4%. The two-year trajectory (31.54% to 17.91% to 12.81%) is the steepest sustained decline of any Alabama district enrolling more than 10,000 students.

Mobile County's 2024-25 rate is not just approaching pre-COVID levels. It has dropped below them. The district's 2018-19 baseline was 14.44%. At 12.81%, Mobile sits 1.63 percentage points better than where it stood before the pandemic disrupted everything.

From worst to near-average

The scale of the turnaround becomes clearer in context. In 2022-23, Mobile County^↗'s chronic rate of 31.54% made it one of the worst-performing large districts in Alabama, higher than Birmingham^↗ (23.35%), Montgomery County^↗ (26.33%), or Jefferson County^↗ (17.83%).

By 2024-25, Mobile sits at 12.81%, just 0.76 percentage points above the state average of 12.05%. A district that was once the attendance crisis of the state is now essentially average.

The improvement outpaces what other large districts achieved. Birmingham improved by 15.9 percentage points from its peak, impressive, but still less than Mobile's 18.7. Huntsville City^↗ improved by 10.6 points. Montgomery, by contrast, improved by just 1.0 point.

Every subgroup improved

What distinguishes Mobile's recovery is its breadth. Every major subgroup improved substantially from its 2022-23 level:

Economically disadvantaged students improved the most, dropping 20.5 percentage points (from 35.7% to 15.2%). Black students improved by 20.4 points (33.9% to 13.5%). White students improved by 17.4 points (30.4% to 13.1%).

Even English learners, who already had comparatively lower chronic rates, improved by 13.2 percentage points (19.6% to 6.39%). Hispanic students improved by 14.2 points.

Of those five groups, economically disadvantaged and Black students had the highest 2022-23 rates and also posted the largest absolute improvements. Mobile's recovery did not simply ride on its more affluent students getting back to school. The most affected populations participated in the turnaround.

What happened

Mobile's trajectory suggests something more deliberate than a natural regression to the mean. The district's rate was essentially flat from 2021-22 to 2022-23 (30.93% to 31.54%), and it was not gradually improving. Then it dropped 13.6 points in a single year, and another 5.1 the next.

That kind of sharp inflection point typically reflects a policy change, a leadership decision, or a systematic intervention rather than organic drift. Alabama's statewide strategies (the Helping Families Initiative, early warning systems, the shift from punitive truancy enforcement to school-based parent meetings) may have found particularly fertile ground in a large district with the infrastructure to implement them at scale.

The district's size works in its favor. With 47,366 students in 2024-25, Mobile County has the staff, data systems, and administrative capacity to identify chronically absent students early and deploy targeted interventions. Smaller districts in the Black Belt, facing similar or worse rates, often lack these resources.

The remaining gap

At 12.81%, Mobile's chronic absenteeism is not solved: applied to the district's 47,366 students, that rate works out to roughly 6,100 children missing 18 or more days of school in 2024-25. And within the district, subgroup disparities persist. Economically disadvantaged students remain at 15.22%, more than twice the rate of English learners at 6.39%.

But the district has demonstrated something that the broader data only hints at: that a large, high-poverty, majority-Black school system can not only recover from the pandemic attendance crisis, but surpass where it was before. Mobile County's pre-COVID rate of 14.44% was itself unremarkable. Its 2024-25 rate of 12.81% is meaningfully better.

Five of the 14 Alabama systems enrolling more than 10,000 students now sit below their 2018-19 chronic absenteeism rate. Mobile is the one that began the recovery with the highest rate of any of them and finished with the largest drop.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Alabama Still Enrolls More Kindergartners Than Seniors, but the Margin Is Narrower

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Correction: This article was rewritten before publication to remove unsupported projections and externally sourced numbers. The revised analysis treats the 2025-26 grade counts as planning signals, not forecasts.

Alabama still enrolled more kindergartners than grade-12 students in 2025-26, but the difference was much smaller than at the start of the available state data. The state counted 55,329 students in kindergarten and 53,346 in grade 12, leaving a gap of 1,983.

That statewide balance can help leaders frame near-term questions about grade-level staffing and space. It cannot predict total enrollment on its own: kindergarten and grade 12 are different cohorts, and students can enter, leave or repeat grades between those endpoints.

A smaller statewide margin

In 2014-15, Alabama counted 57,138 kindergartners and 50,140 grade-12 students, a difference of 6,998. There were 114.0 kindergartners for every 100 grade-12 students. By 2025-26, that ratio was 103.7, a decline of 10.2 points across the available panel.

The gap narrowed in eight of the 11 annual transitions and widened in three. In the latest transition alone, it narrowed by 2,645 students. That mixed record matters: the long-run direction is toward a smaller margin, but the annual path has not moved in one direction every year.

The ratio is best read as a snapshot of the grades at opposite ends of the K-12 system. A ratio above 100 says the kindergarten count is larger in that reporting year. It does not establish when or whether the two grades will cross, and it does not show what will happen to the students between them.

Districts face different balances

The statewide result also hides local variation. Among 141 districts with positive published counts in both kindergarten and grade 12 in 2025-26, 47 enrolled fewer kindergartners than grade-12 students, 92 enrolled more, and two had equal counts.

Limestone County^↗ had 979 kindergartners and 1,612 grade-12 students, a difference of 633 in the other direction. Jefferson County^↗ had 2,300 kindergartners and 2,832 grade-12 students, a difference of 532.

Other large systems pointed the opposite way. Mobile County^↗ enrolled 3,694 kindergartners and 3,358 grade-12 students, 336 more at the entry grade. Montgomery County^↗ enrolled 2,206 kindergartners and 1,529 grade-12 students, a difference of 677.

Those district counts are not performance measures. They identify where the grade mix is different enough to merit a closer look at local class sections, staffing assignments and building use. The enrollment data alone does not identify the reasons for each district's balance.

Earlier and later grade bands moved differently

The broader K-12 grade spine shows the same planning tension without implying a forecast. From 2014-15 to 2025-26, K-5 enrollment decreased by 3,247 students and grades 6-8 decreased by 3,000. Grades 9-12 increased by 1,098.

These are observed cross-sections, not a projection of future graduating classes. Cohort movement, retention and student mobility can change the relationship as students progress through school. The useful question for state and district leaders is therefore narrower: whether the 2025-26 distribution of students matches where teachers, courses and classrooms are assigned.

Dr. Michael Sibley of the Alabama State Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment from The ALEdTribune before publication.

Enrollment counts come from the Alabama State Department of Education's school data reports.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

One in Three Alabama Districts at All-Time Enrollment Lows

Wed, 20 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT

The four largest school districts in Alabama have never enrolled fewer students than they do right now. Mobile County^↗, Jefferson County^↗, Montgomery County^↗, and Birmingham City^↗ all hit record lows in 2025-26, a distinction they share with 47 other districts across the state. In total, 51 of Alabama's 153 multi-year districts are at their lowest enrollment in at least 12 years of data. They collectively serve 255,066 students, more than a third of the state's public school population, and every one of them is shrinking.

The 51 districts at record lows enroll 35.7% of Alabama's students. The 24 districts at record highs enroll 10.1%. The arithmetic is stark: the declining districts are, on average, far larger than the growing ones.

The big four keep falling

Alabama's enrollment trajectory is a story that begins at the top. Mobile County, the state's largest district, peaked at 58,529 students in 2016 and has declined every year since, reaching 46,700 in 2025-26. That is a loss of 11,829 students, a 20.2% drop over a decade.

Birmingham City has lost even more proportionally: 24.5% since its 2016 peak, falling from 25,454 to 19,206. Montgomery County is down 19.9%, from 31,082 to 24,911. Jefferson County's decline is smaller at 9.2%, but at 33,204 students, it still lost 3,367 from its peak.

Combined, these four districts have shed 27,615 students since 2016. That is more than the entire current enrollment of Montgomery County.

The scale matters because Alabama's Foundation Program funding formula allocates teacher units based on student enrollment. State Superintendent Eric Mackey estimated that the statewide enrollment decline would eliminate 500 to 700 teaching positions in the next budget cycle. Districts that are already at record lows face the sharpest cuts. Selma City^↗ lost 10% of its state-funded teacher units in a single year, dropping from 143 to 128. Sumter County^↗ lost 9%, from 54 to 50.

The deepest losses are in the Black Belt

The 15 districts with the steepest percentage declines from their peaks read like a map of Alabama's Black Belt, the band of majority-Black, high-poverty rural counties stretching through the state's midsection. Perry County^↗ has lost 57.7% of its students since 2015, falling from 1,730 to 731. Sumter County is down 52.4%. Wilcox County^↗ has lost 45.9%. Selma City has lost 44.3%.

These are not enrollment dips. They are existential declines in communities where the school system is often the largest employer and the last functioning public institution. A district that loses half its students does not simply cut half its budget. Fixed costs for buildings, transportation routes, and administrative staff do not scale linearly with enrollment. What remains is a system trying to operate a full district infrastructure on half the revenue.

The Black Belt's enrollment crisis is driven by population out-migration that has been documented for decades. Working-age residents leave for employment in Birmingham, Huntsville, Montgomery, or out of state entirely, and the families that remain tend to be older or without school-age children. A 2025 PARCA analysis found that Alabama's deaths now exceed its births, a demographic shift that compounds the out-migration effect in rural counties where in-migration provides no offset.

Who is actually growing?

Twenty-four districts hit all-time highs in 2025-26, but the list requires careful reading. The three largest "growth stories" are inflated by statewide virtual schools that are administratively housed within those districts. Limestone County's 91.9% growth is half Alabama Connections Academy (8,307 of 16,633 students). Chickasaw City's 263% growth is 70.8% Alabama Destinations Career Academy.

Strip out the virtual school enrollments and the genuine growth districts are a mix of suburban satellites and charter schools. Madison City^↗, the largest non-virtual grower at 12,876 students, has gained 32.3% by absorbing families moving to the Huntsville metro's tech-driven economy around Redstone Arsenal. Pike Road City^↗, a small suburb southeast of Montgomery, has grown 142% by pulling families out of the Montgomery County system it borders.

The charter schools at record highs are mostly young: LEAD Academy, Legacy Prep, and i3 Academy have existed for fewer than six years, so their "all-time highs" reflect short histories rather than sustained growth trajectories.

Three forces, and a fourth

The enrollment decline has no single cause, but three forces are clearly operating simultaneously.

The first is demographic. Alabama's birth rate has been falling for over a decade. The state's natural population change turned negative during the pandemic, meaning more Alabamians die each year than are born. The children entering kindergarten today come from smaller birth cohorts than the high schoolers graduating out.

The second is the CHOOSE Act, Alabama's education savings account program signed into law in 2023. In its first year, roughly 3,000 students who had been in public schools used CHOOSE Act funds to move to private education. That is a measurable but modest share of the 5,800-student total decline. The Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama found that about three-quarters of the 23,429 CHOOSE Act recipients were already enrolled in private schools, meaning the program's net public-school impact was far smaller than its headline enrollment figure.

The third is the ongoing urban-to-suburban migration pattern visible in the big four's declines. Birmingham loses students to Hoover, Vestavia Hills, and Homewood. Montgomery loses students to Pike Road and Elmore County. Mobile loses students to Baldwin County. This is not a new dynamic, but it is accelerating: the combined suburban ring around Birmingham (Hoover, Vestavia Hills, Homewood, Trussville, Mountain Brook) enrolled roughly 27,000 students in 2026 while Birmingham City enrolled 19,206.

A fourth factor is harder to quantify. Of the 5,800 students who left Alabama's public schools in 2025-26, State Superintendent Mackey acknowledged that roughly 2,100 "just disappeared" with no record of transferring, withdrawing for homeschool, or enrolling elsewhere. "The address we have on file is not correct anymore," Mackey said. Immigration enforcement and family mobility both contribute to students becoming invisible to enrollment systems, but the state cannot distinguish between these causes in its data.

The scatter tells the story

What makes 2026 different from prior years is the breadth of the decline. In 2017, zero Alabama districts were at all-time lows. By 2021, 11 were. In 2025, the number jumped to 30. In 2026 it reached 51. The progression from 30 to 51 in a single year is the largest one-year increase in the data.

The scatter plot reveals something the aggregate counts obscure: the all-time lows are not concentrated in a single district type. Small rural systems, midsized county districts, and the state's largest urban systems are all represented. A 700-student Black Belt county and a 46,700-student coastal metropolis are in the same statistical category. Whatever is driving enrollment downward, it is not selective about geography or scale.

The districts that sit "between" their extremes, plotted in gray, are running out of room. Many are 10% to 20% below their peaks and trending toward their own record lows. If current trajectories hold, the 2027 count could approach 60 or more.

What comes next

The question Alabama faces is whether any of its growth sources can offset the structural decline. The CHOOSE Act is set to expand to universal eligibility in 2027-28, removing the current income cap and opening the program to all Alabama families. With funding already at $250 million, the outflow from public to private schools is likely to grow beyond the 3,000 students who left in its first year. The state's charter sector, though growing, remains small at roughly 1% of total enrollment. And the demographic headwinds, fewer births, aging rural populations, continued out-migration from the Black Belt, show no sign of reversing.

For the 51 districts at all-time lows, the enrollment number is not abstract. It determines how many teachers the state will fund, how many bus routes a county can operate, and whether a school building stays open. In Perry County, where enrollment has fallen below 750 students in a system that once served more than 1,700, the question is not whether the trend will reverse. It is how long the district can sustain the infrastructure of a school system at half its designed capacity.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

One in 14 Alabama Students Is Now an English Learner

Wed, 13 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In Tarrant City^↗, a district of 1,221 students wedged between Birmingham and its northern suburbs, more than one in three students is classified as an English learner. A decade ago, it was one in 25. Tarrant is not an outlier. It is the leading edge of the fastest-growing student population in Alabama public schools.

Since 2014-15, the number of English learners in Alabama has grown from 13,793 to 51,068, a 270% increase that has reshaped staffing, budgets, and instructional models in districts that were not built for multilingual education. Over the same period, total enrollment fell by 14,450 students. The two trends are moving in opposite directions, and the gap is widening.

The steepest curve in the state

English learner enrollment has grown every year since 2014-15, adding an average of 3,728 students per year. The share of the student body classified as EL has risen from 1.9% to 7.1%, more than tripling in relative terms even as the denominator shrank.

The growth has not been steady. The year-over-year pace tells a more complex story: a large jump of 7,037 students in 2015-16, a near-plateau in 2016-17 (just 136 newly identified as English learners), then a sustained acceleration from 2017-18 onward. The largest gain since that initial jump came in 2023-24, when 6,408 students were added to EL rolls. In 2024-25, the pace slowed to 3,230, though the absolute count still reached a new high.

The 2015-16 jump deserves a caveat. A single-year increase of 51% likely reflects expanded identification and reporting protocols rather than actual new arrivals of that magnitude. Alabama adopted new EL screening procedures aligned with federal guidance during this period. The growth from 2017 onward, by contrast, has been far more consistent and tracks closely with Hispanic enrollment trends in the state, which rose from 7.0% of the student body in 2015-16 to 12.2% in 2024-25. The two categories overlap heavily: most English learners in Alabama are Spanish-speaking, and many are children of families drawn to the state's food processing industry.

The poultry corridor

The geographic concentration is pronounced. Eight districts now have EL shares above 20%, and all but one sit along a corridor of poultry processing and meatpacking operations stretching across northeast Alabama.

Albertville City^↗ leads the large-district list at 37.7% EL, with 2,086 English learners in a system of about 5,500 students. Russellville City^↗, in Franklin County, has climbed from 4.9% to 35.9% in a decade, one of the steepest trajectories in the state. Fort Payne City^↗, the seat of DeKalb County^↗, stands at 22.9%. DeKalb County itself, the surrounding district, is at 22.1%.

Albertville Superintendent Bart Reeves has described the staffing challenge in direct terms.

"We do have some translators, but certainly not the number we need. So that's challenging." -- Alabama Daily News, Aug. 2024

The link between EL enrollment and the food processing industry is not incidental. Albertville's student body is roughly 60% Hispanic, according to Reeves, drawn by decades of recruitment into the region's poultry plants. Marshall County^↗ (16.9% EL) and Franklin County (13.5% EL) follow the same pattern.

Beyond the corridor

The highest-concentration districts are in the northeast, but the largest absolute gains have occurred in Alabama's urban centers. Montgomery County^↗ added 2,705 English learners since 2014-15, going from 450 (1.5% of enrollment) to 3,155 (12.4%). Jefferson County^↗ added 2,178, Birmingham City^↗ added 1,757, and Mobile County^↗ added 1,752. In all four, total enrollment declined while EL counts surged.

The two trends create a structural mismatch. Districts are simultaneously losing base enrollment (and the per-pupil funding it carries) while absorbing students whose instructional programs carry higher costs. EL instruction typically requires dedicated staff, specialized materials, and translation services that general-fund formulas were not designed to cover.

Lanett City^↗, a small district on the Georgia border, is a case study in rapid transformation. It reported 45 English learners (5.0%) in 2015-16. By 2024-25, 280 of its 959 students, 29.2%, are English learners. Lanett's total enrollment has fallen over the same period, meaning EL growth is not a function of the district expanding. New families are arriving as others leave.

Twenty-eight Alabama districts now have EL shares above 10%, up from a handful a decade ago. Decatur City^↗ (23.3%), Boaz City (22.2%), and Jasper City (15.1%) round out the high-concentration districts.

The funding question

Until 2025, Alabama allocated roughly $488 per EL student in state funds, with an additional $89 per student from the federal government. For a district like Albertville, that translated to just over $1 million for a population that constitutes more than a third of its student body and needs dedicated instruction, assessment, and family communication in multiple languages.

The RAISE Act, signed by Governor Ivey in May 2025, restructures Alabama's funding formula to weight student needs. English learners receive a 7% weight on the base funding factor of $7,547 per pupil, which translates to roughly $528 per EL student. Districts where EL students exceed 9% of enrollment receive a 10% weight, or about $754 per student. The first-year allocation for EL programs totals $33.5 million statewide.

For DeKalb County Schools, the RAISE Act means an additional $1.4 million in its fiscal year 2026 budget. Anna Hairston, the district's director of federal programs, told the Alabama Reflector the system has already hired two ELL teachers with the new funding, with four more positions in the hiring process. The question is scale: 51,068 EL students at $528-$754 each still falls well short of what districts like Russellville spend per EL student on instruction, assessment, and support services.

The Hechinger Report documented the staffing challenge in Russellville in 2022, noting the district employed roughly 20 EL educators, aides, and translators, nearly half funded through temporary COVID-19 relief money.

"We were trying to teach an increasing number of EL students with predominantly white teachers that speak English." -- Heath Grimes, Russellville Superintendent, The Hechinger Report, Oct. 2022

A share that grew while enrollment shrank

The rising EL share is partly a denominator effect. Total statewide enrollment dropped by 14,450 students (2.0%) from 2014-15 to 2024-25, while EL enrollment added 37,275. Even if total enrollment had held flat, English learners would have grown from 1.9% to 6.9% of the student body. The shrinking denominator pushed the share to 7.1%.

Thirty-nine districts saw both a rise in EL enrollment and a decline in total headcount. In Montgomery County, EL enrollment grew by 2,705 while total enrollment fell by 4,707. In Birmingham City, EL enrollment grew by 1,757 while total enrollment fell by 4,844. These districts are not simply gaining students. Their student bodies are being recomposed.

The data cannot distinguish between these sources of growth. A rising EL count could reflect new students enrolling for the first time, existing students being newly identified through improved screening, or some combination. The 2015-16 spike (7,037 additional English learners in a single year) almost certainly includes a large identification component. The sustained growth from 2017 onward is more plausibly driven by actual new arrivals, given its alignment with Hispanic enrollment growth and regional economic data, though districts that expanded screening capacity would also show identification-driven increases.

What 2025-26 may change

The 2025-26 school year introduced a new variable. State Superintendent Eric Mackey reported in October 2025 that approximately 5,000 students did not return to Alabama's public schools, the largest single-year drop in four decades. Of those, roughly 3,000 took advantage of Alabama's new CHOOSE Act education savings accounts.

The remaining 2,100, Mackey said, simply vanished from the rolls.

"They're just gone. They didn't transfer to private school, they didn't go to home school, they didn't go to school in another state." -- WBRC, Oct. 2025

Mackey noted that superintendents across the state have told him "a lot" of the missing students are Hispanic, though schools are prohibited by federal law from asking about immigration status. The timing coincides with intensified federal immigration enforcement in Alabama.

The 2024-25 data in this analysis predates those disappearances. Whether the decade-long EL growth trajectory bends, stalls, or reverses in 2025-26 will depend on the interplay of continued immigration into the poultry corridor, enforcement-driven departures, the CHOOSE Act's impact on EL families, and district capacity to identify and serve new arrivals. The data for 2025-26, when it becomes available, will be the first real test of whether Alabama's EL growth is decelerating or was simply paused.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Alabama Is 32,000 Students Below Its Pre-COVID Trajectory

Wed, 06 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Alabama's public schools enrolled 740,118 students in 2019-20. That was roughly where they had been for half a decade: fluctuating within a narrow band, never gaining or losing more than a percentage point in any direction. A linear projection through the 2015-2019 data produces a nearly flat trajectory, essentially forecasting enrollment would hold steady around 740,000.

If that trajectory had continued through the pandemic and beyond, Alabama would have 746,099 students in 2025-26. Instead it has 714,363. The gap between where Alabama was headed and where it actually landed is 31,736 students, and it has widened in five of the seven post-pandemic years.

A gap that only runs one direction

The divergence started small. In 2019-20, the gap between actual and projected enrollment was just 3,070 students. COVID blew it open: by 2020-21, the gap had quadrupled to 13,887. The 2021-22 school year brought a partial rebound, narrowing the gap to 8,350 as families returned to classrooms.

That was the last good news.

Since 2022, the gap has widened relentlessly. It jumped to 14,854 in 2022-23, then nearly doubled to 26,412 in 2023-24. By 2025-26 it had reached 31,736, or 4.3% below the projected trajectory. Each year Alabama falls further behind the line it was on before the pandemic arrived.

The year-over-year enrollment changes tell the same story from a different angle. After losing 10,332 students during the pandemic's first year, Alabama clawed back 6,022 in 2021-22. It has lost students in every year since. The 2023-24 loss of 11,073 was the largest single-year decline in the dataset, exceeding even the COVID year itself. The losses in 2024-25 (-1,243) and 2025-26 (-3,110) were smaller in absolute terms, but they came on top of a base that was already deeply eroded.

Alabama is now in a four-year decline streak, with enrollment at its lowest point in the 12-year dataset: 714,363. That is 35,534 fewer students than the 2015-16 peak of 749,897, a 4.7% decline.

Five districts account for most of the damage

The losses are not evenly distributed. Of 141 districts with data spanning 2020 to 2026, 110 lost enrollment, or 78%. But five districts account for 73.1% of the total state loss of 25,755 students since 2019-20.

Mobile County^↗ leads: 7,314 students lost since 2019-20, a 13.5% decline. Birmingham City^↗ lost 3,665 (16.0%). Montgomery County^↗ lost 3,516 (12.4%). Jefferson County^↗ lost 3,254 (8.9%). Shelby County rounds out the top five at 1,074 (5.1%).

The concentration of losses in Alabama's largest urban and suburban systems reflects a pattern visible across the South: big-district families have more exit options, whether private schools, charter schools, homeschooling, or migration to smaller systems nearby. Dallas County^↗, with 2,032 students remaining, has lost 29.3% of its enrollment since 2019-20, the steepest percentage decline among the top losers.

Where the students went

Three forces are pulling students out of Alabama's public schools, and they are difficult to untangle.

The CHOOSE Act, Alabama's education savings account program, launched in the 2025-26 school year. Of roughly 24,000 students awarded ESA funds, approximately 3,032 had previously attended public schools. That accounts for roughly half of the 2025-26 decline but only a small fraction of the cumulative 31,736 trajectory gap. Most CHOOSE Act recipients, about two-thirds, were already in private schools or homeschool programs before the program existed.

A second, murkier factor is the disappearance of students whose families appear to have left the state or withdrawn from formal schooling without notifying their districts. State Superintendent Eric Mackey told WSFA that of the 5,800 students who did not return in 2025-26, roughly half enrolled in private schools or homeschooling. The other half remains unaccounted for.

"We do believe that there is a group of students out there that may be homeschooling, but have not been accounted for because they haven't actually gone to their local school board and withdrawn and indicated that as their preference." -- State Superintendent Eric Mackey, WSFA, Oct. 2025

Superintendents across the state have reported that many of the unaccounted students are Hispanic. A new federal reporting form that allows students to select multiple racial identities has made it harder to parse what portion of the apparent Hispanic enrollment decline reflects actual departures versus reclassification. PARCA's analysis found reported Hispanic enrollment fell from 12% to 4% of students between 2024-25 and 2025-26, a drop of 56,196 students on paper. But the "two or more races" category surged by 52,627 students over the same period, absorbing most of the apparent decline. Alabama actually gained about 300 Hispanic students in net terms, according to the final count.

The third factor is demographic. Alabama's birth rates fell starting with the 2008 recession and never recovered. Deaths have outnumbered births for three consecutive years. Smaller kindergarten cohorts have been feeding into the pipeline for over a decade, and there is no rebound on the horizon.

Beyond recovery

The language of "COVID recovery" implies a return to normal. Alabama's data suggests the pandemic was not a disruption but a permanent break.

The state lost 10,332 students during COVID (2019-20 to 2020-21). In the five years since, it has not recovered a single one. Instead, it has lost an additional 15,423 students beyond the COVID low of 729,786. The recovery rate is not low. It is negative: -149%.

Put differently, the COVID drop was 10,332 students. The post-COVID decline has been roughly one and a half times larger.

The expected budget impact is approximately $30 million in reduced allocations for fiscal year 2027, with an estimated 500 education positions affected statewide. Alabama's new RAISE Act funding formula, which sets a base of $7,547 per student for 2025-26, means each student who leaves takes that funding with them.

What happens next

The CHOOSE Act is set to expand. Governor Ivey signed an amended budget that nearly doubled the program's initial funding from $100 million to $180 million in its first year. Eligibility remains income-limited for 2026-27, then expands to all Alabama K-12 residents in 2027-28. If more public school students take ESA funds in year two and beyond, the trajectory gap will widen further.

But the CHOOSE Act is a recent addition to a longer story. Alabama was losing students well before the voucher program existed. The 2023-24 loss of 11,073 students, the largest in the dataset, happened a full year before the first ESA dollar was spent. The underlying forces pulling enrollment down, declining births, outmigration, and a growing preference for alternatives to traditional public schools, were at work before the pandemic and have accelerated since.

The question for Alabama's 155 school districts is not when enrollment will return to pre-COVID levels. It is how to operate a system built for 740,000 students when fewer than 715,000 show up, and fewer arrive each year.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

28 Alabama Districts Have Recovered to Pre-COVID Enrollment. Four in Five Have Not

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Five years after the pandemic emptied classrooms across Alabama, the students have not come back. Of 138 districts with comparable enrollment data from before COVID through 2025-26, just 28 have returned to their fall 2019 levels. That is a recovery rate of 20.3%.

The state as a whole has fared worse than any individual recovery statistic suggests. Alabama enrolled 740,118 K-12 students in the 2019-20 school year (the last pre-COVID fall count). By 2025-26, that figure had fallen to 714,363, a loss of 25,755 students, or 3.5%. The pandemic did not cause a temporary dip followed by a rebound. It marked the beginning of a sustained decline that has now lasted four consecutive years.

The false recovery of 2022

Alabama's year-over-year pattern tells a story of one brief reprieve surrounded by losses. After COVID drove enrollment down by 10,332 students in 2020-21, the state clawed back 6,022 in 2021-22. That single year accounts for the entirety of Alabama's post-pandemic recovery. Every year since has brought another decline: 6,019 lost in 2022-23, then 11,073 in 2023-24 (the largest single-year drop in the dataset), followed by 1,243 in 2024-25 and 3,110 in 2025-26.

The 2022 rebound, in other words, was not the start of recovery. It was an interruption in a downward slide.

Had pre-pandemic trends held, Alabama would have enrolled roughly 741,860 students in 2025-26 (based on the 2015-2020 linear trajectory). The actual count of 714,363 leaves the state 27,497 students below that projection, a gap that has widened every year since 2022.

Three cities, 14,495 missing students

The largest raw losses are concentrated in Alabama's urban cores. Mobile County^↗ has lost 7,314 students since its pre-COVID count, a 13.5% decline. Birmingham City^↗ is down 3,665 students (16.0%), and Montgomery County^↗ has lost 3,516 (12.4%). Together, these three districts account for 14,495 of the state's 25,755-student shortfall, or 56.3%.

Jefferson County^↗, which surrounds Birmingham, lost another 3,254 students (8.9%), bringing the Big Four total to 17,749.

The losses extend deep into smaller systems. Dallas County^↗ has lost 29.3% of its enrollment since 2020. Selma City^↗ is down 25.5%. Walker County^↗ lost 1,042 students, a 14.0% decline. These are districts that were already operating on thin margins.

Where the students went

State Superintendent Eric Mackey offered a blunt accounting in October 2025. Of the 5,800 students Alabama's public schools lost that year, approximately 3,000 enrolled in private schools or homeschool programs using education savings accounts through the CHOOSE Act, the voucher-like program signed into law in March 2024. Another 2,100 students simply vanished from enrollment records.

"We know we have about 2,100 kids that were enrolled last year that have just disappeared. They're just gone." -- WBRC, Oct. 2025

Mackey reported that local superintendents identified a majority of the unaccounted students as Hispanic, though federal privacy law prohibits schools from inquiring about immigration status. The CHOOSE Act's first-year impact was more modest than its appropriation suggested: of approximately 24,000 ESA recipients, roughly 10,000 were already attending private schools, and another 9,000 were already homeschooled. Only about 3,000 transferred out of public schools, according to state data.

The CHOOSE Act's second year could have a larger effect. Lawmakers have discussed making the program universal despite tight Education Trust Fund budgets, which would open eligibility beyond the current income-tiered structure.

But the CHOOSE Act alone does not explain the scale of the post-COVID shortfall. The 25,755-student gap accumulated over five years. Birth rate declines, interstate migration, and a persistent post-pandemic shift toward homeschooling and private schooling all contributed. Alabama's natural population change turned negative in 2024, with deaths exceeding births by 2,200, a demographic headwind that enrollment data is only beginning to reflect.

The virtual school mirage

The three districts that appear to have staged the most impressive post-COVID recoveries are, on closer inspection, artifacts of virtual school enrollment that did not exist before the pandemic.

Limestone County^↗ grew from 11,030 to 16,633 students (50.8%), but nearly half of its current enrollment consists of Alabama Connections Academy students. Eufaula City^↗ surged from 5,367 to 8,619 (60.6%), with Alabama Virtual Academy accounting for roughly three-quarters of its headcount. Chickasaw City^↗ more than doubled, from 1,549 to 3,387 (118.7%), largely through Alabama Destinations Career Academy.

Remove these three districts and the recovery rate drops from 22.0% to 20.3%. The virtual enrollment these districts carry is real in the sense that students are receiving instruction, but it inflates the host district's numbers in ways that obscure the underlying trend. As Mackey told Alabama Daily News: "Virtual school is a good fit for some young people...but it's not for everybody."

The funding cliff behind the enrollment cliff

Enrollment decline does not just mean empty desks. Alabama's Foundation Program allocates teacher units based on student headcounts from the 20-day count following Labor Day. Fewer students means fewer units, which means fewer teachers funded by the state.

"Between 500-700 teacher jobs will disappear next year as we work on the next budget cycle." -- State Superintendent Eric Mackey, WBRC, Oct. 2025

More than half of Alabama's school districts faced teacher unit reductions in 2025-26. The cuts fell hardest on small and rural systems, particularly in the Black Belt. Selma City lost 10% of its teacher units (from 143 to 128). Sumter County dropped 9% (from 54 to 50). Linden City lost 9% (from 23 to 21). These are districts where state funding constitutes the overwhelming majority of operating budgets.

Recovery by district size

Medium-sized districts (5,000-10,000 students) have the lowest recovery rate at 16.0%, with only four of 25 returning to pre-COVID levels. Small districts (1,000-5,000) recovered at 19.8%, and large districts (10,000+) at 23.1%. The handful of micro districts under 1,000 students fared best at 33.3%, though the sample is small (three of nine).

Among the districts that did recover without virtual school inflation, several share a common profile: fast-growing suburban communities in the Tennessee Valley or the Auburn-Opelika corridor. Madison City^↗ gained 1,336 students (11.6%). Athens City^↗ added 1,101 (25.1%). These are places where new housing construction is pulling families from neighboring counties, not places where the pandemic's effects have been reversed.

Athens City has been building to keep pace. According to Superintendent Beth Patton, the district opened a new 260,000-square-foot high school in 2019, a new elementary campus in 2023, and expanded its intermediate school with eight classrooms and a gymnasium in 2025. A second new elementary school, Julian Newman Elementary, opened the same year with capacity for more than 700 students. The district is now searching for land to build yet another school. "We are excited about the future and believe the best is yet to come," Patton said.

What the next count will show

The 2026-27 school year will be the CHOOSE Act's second cycle. When income limits lift in 2027-28, the pull on public enrollment could accelerate. The 2,100 students who disappeared from rolls in 2025-26 without formal transfers represent a category that enrollment data cannot fully explain. Whether those families left the state, shifted to unreported homeschooling, or left the country, the seats they occupied will not be funded in 2026-27.

Alabama's four-year decline streak has now erased all of the 2016 enrollment spike and then some, pushing the state to its lowest K-12 headcount since before 2015. For superintendents in Mobile, Birmingham, and Montgomery, the question is no longer when recovery will arrive. It is how to operate school systems built for 25,000 more students than they serve.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.