Enrollment Declines Hit 24 Out of 28 Oakland County School Districts
(Kurt Metzger, March 25, 2025)
Oakland County, MI – New data released by the Center for Educational Performance and Information (CEPI) in MISchoolData.org show that enrollment in Michigan’s K-12 public school system continued its downward trend last fall (24-25 school year), while enrollment increased in private schools and taxpayer-funded charter schools. Education professionals see this as a signal that Michigan’s public education system has not fully recovered the students it lost during the global pandemic, which started in March 2020, and is exacerbated by birth trends that will mean decreasing numbers of children entering the K-12 system in coming years.
I wanted to again see how Oakland County’s traditional K-12 districts have fared over this period, 2019-20 – 2024-25. I did a similar analysis a year ago which can be found here.
Oakland County has 28 traditional K-12 districts. Of those, 24 have experienced enrollment losses. As can be seen in the accompanying chart, the largest losers (over 1,000 students) showed some geographic diversity – Walled Lake, Oak Park, Waterford, Huron Valley and Southfield, as did the four that gained students – Novi, Avondale, Lamphere and Ferndale. Southfield has lost 19.5 percent of its students, while Madison lost 16.8 percent. Four more districts have lost more than 10 percent of their students over the last five years.
While a decrease in the county’s school-age population is a major factor in losses, pandemic choices around homeschooling and transfers to charters, private and parochial schools have also played a major role. While data are limited on enrollment in any of these categories, I can report that Public Charter Schools (public school academies) in Oakland County have added 780 students (5.3 percent) over the period. They now account for 15,468 students, while public districts educate just over 168,000.
To see how these losses are spread across grade levels, as one input into enrollment trend forecasts, I compared enrollment counts across the K-12 continuum. The second chart illustrates the losses experienced in every grade level. The largest losses are at opposite ends – Kindergarten and first grade and the early high school years. While we can attribute losses in the early grades to parents holding children back, choosing to home school during early years, switching to private and faith-based alternatives, we must understand that declining births equal a declining school-age population.
Pandemic funding brought monetary resources to our public schools, allowing for additional programming and staff hires. As this funding comes to an end, school districts will be faced with several budget-related choices. State per-pupil funding may be increasing, but decreasing enrollment means decreasing overall revenues. Accurate enrollment forecasts will be more critical than ever before.
Visit the Data-Based Stories Archives on Oakland County Times for stories on voter turnout, population shifts, Dogs of Oakland County, and other statistics-related stories, thanks to Data Expert Kurt Metzger.
