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What we know about the cost of declining enrollment in NC public schools

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In December 2025, there was some reporting of enrollment data when parts of a dashboard managed by the N.C. Department of Public Instruction (DPI) were in the process of being updated. DPI had not announced or released the data, and most reporters who found the new data did not check on the status of the update prior to reporting on it. Different default filters on data sets further led to data sets not being comparable. All of that created confusion.

Enrollment drives funding for public schools. Declines in enrollment will impact the budgets for public schools, with possible ripple effects from reductions in staffing to closing schools to merging districts to more.

Note that different measures of enrollment are used for different purposes.

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A look at DPI’s dashboard and the data

Here is DPI’s Data Analytics and Reporting Tool, a dashboard with a whole bunch of helpful information.

When you land on this page, what you are seeing is “B12. Fiscal Year 2025-2026 Best 1 of 2 Average Daily Membership (ADM).” PSU means public school unit, so you can narrow what you are seeing to limit it to LEAs (which means local education agency, aka school district) or IPSs (which means independent public school and includes charters, lab schools, and a regional school).

The best 1 of 2 is calculated by taking the higher of the month 1 ADM by grade by school compared to the month 2 ADM by grade by school.

You can see that in 2025-26, the total is 1,506,908, which includes 1,347,699 in school districts and 159,209 in independent public schools.

On the second tab, FY 25 Best 1 of 2, you can see comparison data for 2024-25, when the total was 1,526,117, which included 1,371,565 in school districts and 154,552 in independent public schools.

Only seven of 115 school districts had modest increases in enrollment in 2025-26, which you can see on the fourth tab, by PSU: Alleghany (+8), Anson (+6), Brunswick (+180), Clay (+23), Johnston (+18), Clinton City (+13), and Washington (+26). In two districts, enrollment was flat: Stanly and Warren.

Five districts saw declines greater than 5%: Elkin City (-6.70%), Granville (-6.52%), Jones (-6.03%), Roanoke Rapids City (-5.88%), and Perquimans (-5.10%). Six districts lost more than 1,000 students: Charlotte-Mecklenburg (-2,418), Winston-Salem/Forsyth (-1,551), Guilford (-1,310), Durham (-1,309), Cumberland (-1,242), and Union (-1,049).

What are the factors driving the decline in ADM by 19,209 students?

  1. Because of demographic and other changes, there were 3,069 fewer kindergartners that enrolled.
  2. The data won’t be available until summer 2026, but between 5-8,000 students may have enrolled in homeschools based on past data.
  3. The data won’t be available until summer 2026, but some students attending public school may have received a voucher to attend private school, and there may have been additional students who enrolled in private school but did not receive a voucher. In 2024-25, for example, it is estimated that about 6,710 students who received Opportunity Scholarships attended public schools the prior school year.
  4. DPI shifted from PowerSchool to Infinite Campus and differences in those systems could account for some of the difference.

If you are wanting to track ADM — which is the preferred measure of public school enrollment — by school, school district, or charter school year to year, this is your go-to dataset.

What data can you find in the public drop down menu?

In this same dashboard, if you click on the public drop down menu and then on ADM dashboards, you can find Best 1 of 2 ADM Historical View, Best 1 of 2 ADM Trends, Charter School Membership, and Allotment and ADM by Year.

As you compare these datasets, make sure your filters for the data are the same.

The difference between the enrollment data in the dashboard and the data in DPI’s ‘Budget Highlights’

DPI’s annual “Highlights of the North Carolina Public School Budget” report lists the number of students funded in 2025-26 as 1,533,889.

On Page 3 of the report, you can see that “funded ADM” is the allotted average daily membership plus any current year growth. According to the report, “the basis of PSU funding is funded ADM.”

On Page 6, there is an explanation about changes to funded ADM after 2025 that are important to note when comparing historical data.

After FY 2025, funded ADM for all school districts is the higher of the prior year month 1 or 2 ADM. Additional funding is provided if actual ADM is higher than prior year ADM, and there is no reduction in funding if actual ADM is lower than prior year ADM.

A graph on Page 6 shows current year growth ADM above the allotted ADM.

Why is the difference in funded ADM between 2024-25 and 2025-26 — which is 4,674 — so much lower than ADM?

Funded ADM lags ADM because funding systems use multiple mechanisms — for example, averaging daily membership — to provide stability, giving districts and charters time to plan for declining enrollment.

If you are wanting to track funded ADM year to year, this is your go-to source.

Gov. Josh Stein’s budget proposal (see Page 71) is the first indication that there may be a technical adjustment in the next budget passed by the legislature for “multiple public school allotments based on average daily membership (ADM) to reflect changes in student population.”

Additional context from DPI

Since reporting about enrollment will be increasingly important, EdNC consulted with leaders at DPI to make sure we are tracking these trends correctly.

According to DPI, even with the decline, North Carolina enrollment is trending better than public school enrollment nationally. Stay tuned.