Maryland’s public school enrollment appears to have dipped this year, an unexpected turn in a state that predicted an overall increase in the number of students in the next decade.

Though the state education department won’t release official numbers until December, Maryland’s superintendents are already anticipating that budgets will be squeezed next year, as the money they get from the state declines as enrollment falls.

An unofficial count by the Public School Superintendents’ Association of Maryland has the state’s enrollment for kindergarten through 12th grade down by 4,391 students, a large swing, given the state was projecting an increase of 2,500 students. The association’s preliminary count also shows a loss of 1,819 pre-kindergarten students. The state has about 851,000 public school students this year, according to the association, but even a decline of a few thousand students can have a meaningful effect on budgets.

Why fewer students are attending public schools this year is still unclear, but it comes at a time when birth rates are plummeting and a national crackdown on immigration may have slowed the number of students entering public schools.

That supposition appears to be borne out in the numbers. The state has 4,033 fewer students designated as immigrant students learning English, according to the superintendents association’s unofficial estimates.

Baltimore schools are feeling that shift. The number of Hispanic students in city schools rose by 23 this year, said Alison Perkins-Cohen, the chief of staff, but that was strikingly smaller than last’s year gain of 1,300 Hispanic students.

“We haven’t really seen the attendance issue that we feared, so far,“ she said. ”It is something we are watching and working hard to make sure that the schools are welcoming places for our families."

For a school system that has relied on a growing population of Hispanic families in the city to offset its declining Black student enrollment, this year’s fluctuation is significant. The city lost 479 students overall. The decline comes after a gain of students last school year.

The biggest loss in the state came in Montgomery County, which lost about 2,600 students, an outsized proportion of the 156,540-student population.

These numbers shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, according to Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab and a professor at Georgetown University. Birthrates are cratering across the nation, she said, and the decline “will seriously remake education in this country.”

Maryland’s Department of Planning, however, predicts a continuing average increase in enrollment of about 1,000 students a year through the next decade.

Over the past decade, the average yearly increase was about 1,500 students a year, even taking into account a one-year drop of 18,000 students during the pandemic.

The National Center for Education Statistics, however, predicts that Maryland will lose about 8% of its students by 2031.

Roza points out that in district after district, kindergarten classes are coming in smaller than the year before, and the decline could have been predicted by the state. In some counties, there are 2,000 students fewer in each grade, and the trend won’t likely be reversed. If schools are graduating more students in a year than are entering kindergarten, the enrollment is shrinking, she said.

Even if immigration were to pick up again, she said, it isn’t going to mask the birth rate declines.

“It is dropping like a rock because people aren’t having kids at the same rate,“ she said. The loss of students will force the downsizing of staff, schools and funding, she said.

“There is no chance that the enrollment growth they are talking about would have continued,” Rosa said.

The state Department of Planning will adjust its numbers in the spring based on this year’s enrollment. Funds from the state — which often make up a sizable percentage of school system budgets — are dependent on a count of how many students are present by Sept. 30 of each year.

Once those counts are done, the state calculates the next year’s funding.

The superintendents wrote to Gov. Wes Moore on Wednesday asking that he not reduce the amount of money schools are getting beginning in July 2026, when the budget year begins.

In the letter, the superintendents say they believe the enrollment has declined because of lower birth rates, the loss to homeschooling and private schools, and federal immigration trends.

Because they believe enrollment is likely to rise again, they asked the governor to “hold harmless” district funding for a year while they wait for the enrollment to bounce back.

Particularly concerning to the state’s school superintendents is the drop in categories of students they receive more money to educate, including children living in poverty, children with disabilities and children who are recent arrivals and are learning English.

Harford County School Superintendent Sean W. Bulson said that his school system has only seen a decline of a few hundred students this year, and that it will actually help him in the short term.

Last year, he cut $15 million from his budget, including more than 100 teaching positions. Class sizes were projected to rise, but when not as many kindergartners showed up this year it meant kindergartners would not have large classes in that important early grade.

Still, at a cost of more than $17,000 per child, the school system could lose millions of dollars because it has just a few hundred students less.

Bulson hopes to entice some homeschooling parents back into the school district with more virtual classes. There are now 3,000 students being homeschooled in his county, partly the result of technological advances in teaching since the pandemic.

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