Washington Elementary - EdTribune AZ - Arizona Education Data

Two in Three Arizona Districts Never Recovered From COVID

Fri, 29 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Part of the Arizona Enrollment Series. Updated weekly.

Correction (May 29, 2026): An earlier version of this article reported district-recovery figures computed against an outdated data extract. Every district-level count and the loss/gain/gap arithmetic have been recomputed against the current Arizona Department of Education data and corrected, including the headline figure (now 71,505 students). The state totals and named-district numbers were unaffected.

Only 191 of Arizona's 576 school districts have regained their pre-pandemic enrollment. Five years after COVID emptied classrooms across the state, two out of three districts are still underwater, and the share that has recovered is actually shrinking, from 38.2% in 2024 to 33.2% in 2026.

The bounce that wasn't

The post-COVID recovery lasted exactly one year. In 2022-23, enrollment dropped by 6,920. The next year: 10,772. Then 15,582. Then 25,998, the largest single-year loss outside the pandemic itself. The losses have accelerated by roughly half again each year. The 2025-26 decline of 25,998 students is the steepest non-pandemic decline in the dataset; only the 2020-21 COVID shock, when the state lost 33,829 students in a single year, was larger.

At the district level, the recovery picture is bleaker. Only 191 of 576 districts, 33.2%, have returned to their 2020 enrollment levels. That share peaked at 38.2% in 2024 before sliding backward. Nearly three out of four Arizona students now attend a district that is smaller than it was before the pandemic.

The damage is concentrated at the top. Among the 55 districts with 5,000 or more students in 2020, only 13, or 23.6%, have recovered. Every one of Arizona's 10 largest districts is smaller than it was before the pandemic. Together, those 10 lost 48,566 students, two-thirds of the statewide shortfall, on a combined base of roughly 365,000.

Where 71,505 students went

The arithmetic is lopsided. Districts that shrank lost a combined 133,473 students since 2020. Districts that grew added 61,968. The 71,505-student gap represents students who left the public enrollment system entirely, a population larger than Chandler Unified^↗'s current enrollment.

Mesa Unified^↗ leads the losses at 9,515 students, a 15.2% decline that forced the district to lay off 400 employees and plan another 150 position eliminations by the end of 2025-26. Tucson Unified^↗ lost 6,240 (13.8%), prompting Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo to tell his governing board in December that the district is in a fight for survival.

"We are in a do-or-die struggle for enrollment. We have to think big and we have to fire big." -- Tucson Unified Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo, AZ Luminaria, Dec. 2025

Chandler Unified (-5,851, -12.9%) and Paradise Valley Unified^↗ (-5,839, -18.9%) round out the top four. Washington Elementary^↗, a K-8 district in central Phoenix, has lost nearly one in five students since 2020, a 19.8% decline that erased 4,436 seats.

Among the gainers, the names are telling. American Leadership Academy^↗, a charter network, added 7,767 students (+77.9%). Queen Creek Unified^↗, an outer-ring suburb absorbing new housing, added 5,998 (+63.7%). ASU Preparatory Academy Digital, a virtual school, grew from 611 to 4,277 students. The pattern: growth is concentrated in charters, virtual schools, and exurban communities on the metro fringe.

Falling off a cliff, or walking off one

Three forces are converging on Arizona's enrollment. The question that divides education politics in the state is which one matters most.

The most structurally durable factor is demographic. Arizona births peaked at over 102,000 in 2007 and have fallen 36% since then. Kindergarten enrollment in the state data has dropped from 81,305 in 2019-20 to 66,935 in 2025-26, a 17.7% decline that locks in smaller cohorts for the next 12 years. Glenn Farley of the Common Sense Institute Arizona has noted the pipeline effect.

"Every kindergarten class for the past decade has been smaller than the one before." -- Glenn Farley, Common Sense Institute Arizona, KJZZ, Jan. 2025

Mesa Public Schools has cited an 18% statewide decline in birth rates over the last decade and a 28% decline within the city of Mesa specifically.

The second force is Arizona's universal Empowerment Scholarship Account program. Since eligibility expanded to all students in 2022, participation has grown from roughly 12,000 to nearly 100,000 students, at an annual cost exceeding $1 billion. Between fiscal years 2024 and 2025 alone, more than 5,000 students left public district schools for the ESA program. However, roughly 71% of universal ESA participants were already in private school or homeschool before receiving the voucher, complicating any simple narrative about ESA as a drain on public enrollment.

The third force is charter expansion. The enrollment data cannot distinguish charter from traditional district students, but the top gainers list is suggestive: charter networks like American Leadership Academy and Academy of Mathematics and Science South account for several of the largest growth stories, even as traditional districts contract.

Birth rates alone do not explain why 2026's loss was nearly four times larger than 2023's. ESA alone does not explain it either, since 71% of voucher recipients were not in public schools to begin with. The most likely explanation is that all three forces are compounding, each one slightly accelerating the others, with no single factor dominant enough to reverse by addressing it alone.

The fell-back 77

Perhaps the most telling detail is what happened to districts that thought they had recovered. Of 209 districts that returned to their 2020 enrollment levels by 2022, 77 have since fallen back below the line. Phoenix Union High School District was 306 students above its pre-COVID mark in 2022. By 2026, it was 3,854 below it. Florence Unified, J.O. Combs Unified, and Glendale Union High School District followed the same arc: brief recovery, then sustained decline.

This fell-back cohort underscores that the bounce in 2022 was a return to school, not a return to growth. Families who came back after COVID closures did not stay, or were not replaced by the next cohort of kindergartners.

Closures and layoffs follow the money

Per-pupil funding follows students in Arizona. When enrollment drops, revenue drops the following year. An Arizona Auditor General report found that one-third of the state's school districts are now at "increased financial risk" due to declining enrollment and the funding losses that come with it.

The operational fallout is already visible. More than 20 Valley schools have closed or are closing since 2025. Kyrene Elementary District^↗, down 24.2% since 2020, voted to close six schools over two years, projecting $5.8 million in annual savings to cover most of a $6.7 million budget shortfall. Paradise Valley Unified has already closed three campuses. Chandler Unified approved over 100 position cuts. Roosevelt Elementary District closed five schools in December 2025.

The distribution of outcomes is skewed heavily toward loss. Of 576 districts with data in both years, 385 lost enrollment. Among those, 262, nearly half of all Arizona districts, lost more than 10%. Only 189 districts grew at all, and about one in five of those gained less than 5%.

What the kindergarten pipeline signals

The state cannot outgrow its birth cohorts. Kindergarten enrollment has fallen every year since 2022's partial bounce, from 78,898 to 66,935 in 2025-26. Grade 12 enrollment, by contrast, peaked at 98,216 in 2024-25 before ticking down slightly to 98,012. Arizona is graduating far larger classes than it is enrolling. Until that pipeline inverts, total enrollment will continue to fall regardless of what happens with ESA, charter growth, or migration.

Arizona's largest districts are not waiting for enrollment to recover. They are planning for a system that will be permanently smaller, funded for fewer students, and operating in buildings designed for cohorts that no longer exist.

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

One in Three Arizona Districts Just Hit Rock Bottom

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Part of the Arizona Enrollment Series. Updated weekly.

Mesa Unified District^↗ enrolled 52,975 students in 2025-26. It is the largest school district in Arizona, and it has never been smaller. Neither has Chandler, Tucson, Peoria, Gilbert, Paradise Valley, Phoenix Union, Dysart, Scottsdale, or Washington Elementary. The state's 10 biggest districts at their all-time enrollment low collectively serve 305,616 students, 28.5% of Arizona's total. They are all shrinking at once.

Across Arizona, 175 districts with at least 100 students hit their all-time enrollment low in 2025-26. That is one in three. Against them, only 80 districts reached a record high, and nearly 60% of those are charter operators. For every district at a peak, 2.2 are at a trough. More than half the students in the state, 52%, now attend a district that has never had fewer of them.

The acceleration nobody planned for

Arizona's enrollment peaked at 1,145,557 in 2019-20. Since then the state has lost 72,026 students, a 6.3% decline. But the trajectory is not a gentle slope. It is a steepening curve.

The annual losses have grown every year since 2022-23: 6,920, then 10,772, then 15,582, then 25,998. The 2025-26 loss alone is nearly quadruple the 2022-23 figure. Across all districts with at least 100 students, 327 of 519 lost enrollment in 2025-26, 63%.

This is not a COVID aftershock. The pandemic year of 2020-21 was brutal, with a 33,829-student drop. But 2021-22 brought a robust 21,075-student recovery. What followed was different: a sustained, compounding decline with no recovery year in sight.

A list that reads like a who's who

The 175 districts at their all-time low include names that would have seemed invulnerable a decade ago. Paradise Valley Unified District^↗ has lost 6,218 students since 2017-18, a 19.9% decline, with enrollment falling every single year for eight consecutive years. Washington Elementary School District^↗ has shed 20.4% from its 2018-19 peak, losing 4,623 students. Scottsdale Unified District^↗ is down 10.4% from just eight years ago.

Six of the 10 largest all-time-low districts have lost more than 13% from their peaks. Chandler Unified District #80^↗, down 13.5%. Tucson Unified District^↗, down 14.4%. Phoenix Union High School District^↗, down 15.5%. Mesa, down 15.9%.

Ten districts have declined in every single year of the nine-year dataset, the maximum possible streak of eight consecutive annual drops. The list includes Paradise Valley (25,027 students), Cartwright Elementary District^↗ (12,665), Alhambra Elementary District^↗ (9,174), and Glendale Elementary District^↗ (8,220). Another 28 districts have decline streaks of five years or longer. These are not temporary dips. They are structural contractions.

Where growth still exists, it tells its own story

The 80 districts at record highs are disproportionately charter operators: 47 of the 80, or 59%, match charter-like naming patterns (Academy, Inc., LLC, Prep). The largest traditional districts at their peak are outer-ring suburbs: Queen Creek Unified District^↗ (15,408), Vail Unified District^↗ (15,072), Agua Fria Union (10,240), Maricopa Unified (9,545). The biggest charter entity at its peak, American Leadership Academy, enrolls 17,732.

The contrast sharpens the picture. Inner-ring suburbs and urban cores are hemorrhaging students. Outer-ring suburbs and charter operators are absorbing some of them. Arizona's enrollment has not simply declined; it has redistributed, with the net flow moving outward and toward private operators.

Birth rates, vouchers, COVID, and ICE

The acceleration has no single cause. Sherman Dorn, an education policy researcher at Arizona State University, identified four converging forces in a December 2025 analysis: declining birth rates, Arizona's expansive school choice ecosystem, pandemic-era disruptions that permanently altered families' relationships with their schools, and more recently, immigration enforcement fears that have led some families to withdraw children entirely.

The birth rate factor is demographic bedrock. Arizona's total fertility rate fell from 2.4 in 2007 to 1.6 in 2023, well below the replacement rate of 2.1. The state's Office of Economic Opportunity projects that births will barely grow for the next 15 years, and that deaths will exceed births as early as 2029. Even as Arizona's adult population grows through migration, fewer of those migrants are bringing school-age children.

The ESA voucher program has grown into a force that compounds the demographic pressure. As of early 2026, more than 100,000 students are enrolled in Arizona's Empowerment Scholarship Account program, up from roughly 11,000 before universal eligibility in 2022. The program now costs approximately $1 billion annually from the General Fund.

"It is taking a huge bite out of TUSD. $37 million of potential district funds were directed to ESAs in 2024." — TUSD Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo, AZPM, Feb. 2026

In Tucson's Amphitheater School District, more than $14 million in ESA funding flows to students within the district's boundaries while the district itself has voted to close four schools to save $5 million. The arithmetic is hard to ignore.

Buildings emptying, budgets breaking

The fiscal consequences are already showing up in the Arizona Auditor General's annual risk analysis. As of January 2026, nine districts are classified at the highest financial risk level, with nine more approaching it. That represents a doubling from the prior year, when only two districts held the highest-risk designation.

"Fiscal year 2025 was really the first year that I think we're seeing some of the impact of districts not having those monies available any longer." — Meghan Hieger, Arizona Auditor General's Office, KTAR, Feb. 2026

The convergence of expired COVID relief funds and accelerating enrollment decline has left districts making choices that were unprecedented five years ago. Kyrene Elementary District^↗, which now enrolls 12,672 students in a system designed for 20,000, voted unanimously to close six schools to save $5.8 million annually. Scottsdale Unified is considering repurposing up to eight schools. Isaac School District^↗, now flagged as highest financial risk, has already closed three schools.

Small districts face an existential question

Half of the 175 all-time-low districts enroll fewer than 500 students. These 89 districts collectively serve just 22,075 students, an average of 248 each. At the other extreme, six districts above 25,000 students account for 220,951 students at their all-time lows.

The small districts face a different calculus than Mesa or Tucson. A 10% enrollment loss in a 300-student district means 30 fewer students, perhaps one fewer classroom, but also a per-pupil funding cut that can eliminate a teaching position. State Superintendent Tom Horne has raised the possibility of district consolidation as an alternative to individual school closures, arguing that "there are efficiencies of size" and that without them, districts "can't pay teachers properly." The last time two Arizona districts actually merged was in 2001, when the Kingman Elementary and Mohave Union High School districts combined. Legislative efforts since then have failed.

The immigration enforcement question adds a layer of uncertainty that the data cannot resolve. Dorn noted in his analysis that some districts expected enrollment growth but instead saw declines that superintendents attribute to families leaving the country or keeping children home. The data shows the enrollment drop. It cannot distinguish between families who moved, families who switched to ESAs, families who enrolled in charters, and families who withdrew out of fear.

What comes next

The gap between districts at record lows and record highs has widened every year since 2022. In 2023, the split was nearly even: 142 at lows, 141 at highs. By 2026, it was 175 to 80. The trajectory suggests 2026-27 will push that ratio further, particularly if the four forces Dorn identified continue to operate simultaneously.

For the 10 districts with eight-year decline streaks, the relevant question is no longer whether enrollment will recover. It is how to operate school systems designed for populations that no longer exist. Kyrene's answer is to close six buildings. Paradise Valley, which has shed a fifth of its students over eight years without yet announcing closures, will eventually face the same math.

Arizona's population is projected to grow by 900,000 over the next decade. Its school enrollment is moving in the opposite direction. The adults are arriving. The children are not.

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

33,829 Students Vanished. The Real Loss Came After.

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Part of the Arizona Enrollment Series. Updated weekly.

Between the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years, Arizona lost 33,829 students, a 3.0% drop that wiped out the previous two years of growth in a single fall. It was the largest year-over-year loss in the state's enrollment data. But the pandemic shock, as severe as it was, is no longer the main story. The 2021-22 school year brought a bounce of 21,075 students that looked like the beginning of recovery. It wasn't. Since that bounce, Arizona has lost another 59,272 students, nearly twice the COVID loss itself. Enrollment now sits at 1,073,531, a level 72,026 students below the 2020 peak and falling at an accelerating rate.

The pandemic did not cause Arizona's enrollment crisis. It revealed one that was already forming and then made it permanent.

The shape of the shock

Arizona's enrollment hit 1,145,557 in 2019-20, the highest level in the available data. One year later it was 1,111,728. The loss of 33,829 students, 3.0% of enrollment, fell hardest on the state's largest traditional districts. Mesa Unified^↗ lost 4,693 students, 7.5% of its total. Deer Valley Unified^↗ lost 3,927, an 11.4% drop. Tucson Unified^↗ lost 3,350. Across the state, 453 of 654 districts reported fewer students.

The losses fell along a clean gradient of size. Eleven districts with 20,000 or more students collectively lost 24,053 students during the COVID year; 44 medium-sized districts lost 22,053. Small districts with 1,000 to 5,000 students actually netted 8,465 new students, as families fled large systems for smaller ones, or as virtual entities classified as small districts absorbed the overflow.

And there was a lot of overflow. Edkey/Sequoia Choice Schools went from 1,110 students to 5,697, a 413% surge. ASU Prep Digital went from 611 to 4,211. PPEP, a Tucson-based alternative education provider, added 4,042 students. Academy of Mathematics and Science South grew from 1,875 to 5,985. In total, a handful of virtual and digital entities absorbed more than 18,000 students during the COVID year.

The bounce that fooled everyone

In 2021-22, enrollment jumped back by 21,075 students, recovering 62.3% of the COVID loss. The Arizona Department of Education credited its "Ready for School AZ" campaign for bringing families back. The headline numbers suggested the worst was over.

It was a false signal. Every year since the bounce has been negative, and the losses have accelerated: -6,920 in 2022-23, then -10,772, then -15,582, then -25,998 in 2025-26. The four post-bounce years together erased 59,272 students, 5.2% of the 2022 total and 75% more than the COVID shock itself.

Most of the virtual entities that surged during COVID gave their gains back. Edkey/Sequoia Choice fell from 5,697 back to 1,375 by 2025-26. Primavera Virtual Academy dropped from 7,030 to 4,483. Arizona Connections Academy went from 3,083 to 1,961. The students who left traditional districts during the pandemic did not simply return to traditional districts after it. Many left the public system entirely.

Where 72,026 students went

The gap between the 2020 peak and current enrollment did not open because of a single cause. At least three forces pulled students out of Arizona's public schools, and they reinforced each other.

The most structurally significant is demographic. Arizona's school-age population peaked in 2021 and is projected to decrease by 40,000 by 2028, according to the Common Sense Institute of Arizona, citing Census Bureau estimates. The children under five in Arizona fell from 455,375 in 2010 to 393,413 in 2022, a 14% decline. Kindergarten enrollment tracks this: Arizona enrolled 81,305 kindergartners in 2019-20, then 66,935 in 2025-26, a 17.7% drop that shows no sign of reversing.

The second force is school choice. Arizona expanded its Empowerment Scholarship Account program to all students in September 2022, and participation surged from 12,127 to 61,689 in a single year, a 409% increase. By January 2026, more than 100,000 students were using ESAs. The Learning Policy Institute found that 71.2% of universal ESA participants had not previously attended public school, meaning the program's primary fiscal effect was adding new state costs rather than transferring existing students. But the remaining 28.8%, roughly 17,700 students when the program hit 61,689 participants, did leave public schools. In Tucson, 3,300 families within TUSD's boundaries use ESAs to attend private schools, according to KGUN9.

The third is homeschooling, which surged nationally during the pandemic and has not fully receded. The Common Sense Institute reported that Arizona homeschooling jumped from roughly 2% to 11% of the student population during the pandemic before settling to approximately 6%.

No single force accounts for the full 72,026-student gap. The demographic decline was happening before the pandemic; school choice accelerated after it; homeschooling surged during it and partially stuck. The pandemic's role was catalytic: it forced families to make active enrollment decisions, and many of them decided not to come back.

78% of districts are still underwater

Of 396 districts that lost students during the COVID year and have data through 2025-26, only 87 (22.0%) have recovered to their 2020 levels. The remaining 309 are still below where they stood before the pandemic. Sixty percent, 236 districts, are now below even their 2021 COVID trough, meaning they have continued losing students every year since the pandemic hit.

None of the state's 10 largest traditional districts have recovered. Mesa Unified has gone from 62,490 in 2020 to 52,975 in 2026, a net loss of 9,515 students (15.2%). Paradise Valley Unified^↗ lost 18.9%. Washington Elementary^↗ lost 19.8%.

The fiscal consequences are landing now. Mesa Public Schools Superintendent Matt Strom told KJZZ in August 2025 that the district's student population had decreased by 3,400 over three years, with projections showing an additional 4,900-student decline over the next three:

"In the last three years, our student population has decreased by nearly 3,400 students. Projections for the next three years show a further decline of approximately 4,900 students." -- KJZZ, August 2025

Mesa eliminated nearly 400 positions in 2024, laid off 42 certified staff and cut 147 district-level positions in early 2025, and announced another 43 cuts in August. The projected budget shortfall runs between $9 million and $18 million. Nearly 90% of the district's budget goes to employee compensation, leaving almost no margin when per-pupil revenue drops.

Tucson Unified faces a similar trajectory: enrollment fell from 45,248 to 39,008 since 2020, and the district is projecting deficits reaching $21 million by fiscal year 2030 without structural changes.

The kindergarten signal

The kindergarten pipeline offers the clearest view of what comes next, and it is not encouraging. Arizona enrolled 81,305 kindergartners in 2019-20. In 2025-26, the number was 66,935, a drop of 14,370 students, 17.7%. The 2022 kindergarten bounce to 78,898 mirrored the overall enrollment bounce, but kindergarten has since fallen every year to its lowest level in the data.

Each kindergarten cohort sets the ceiling for enrollment 12 years downstream. A class of 66,935 kindergartners in 2026 will become a class of roughly 66,000 or fewer seniors in 2038. If the decline continues at its current pace, Arizona's schools could be enrolling fewer than 60,000 kindergartners before the end of the decade, baking in total enrollment losses that compound for more than a decade.

The Common Sense Institute estimated that declining enrollment since 2020 has already reduced funding formula costs by $450 million per year compared to pre-pandemic trends, with cumulative savings exceeding $1.2 billion over four years. For taxpayers, that is a reduction in spending. For districts, it is the gap between the staff they have and the revenue to pay them.

The COVID shock was not the end of anything. It was the starting gun for a structural shift that has already cost 72,026 students. Superintendents who spent 2022 reassuring their boards can now see the trend line clearly enough to stop pretending it will reverse.

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