In school year 2025-26, D.C. devoted an estimated 29 percent of its gross operating funds budget to public education, making it a crucial fiscal investment.[i] Student counts drive much of this funding through the UPSFF ($2.6 billion in FY 2026),[ii] shaping school budgets and staffing decisions, facilities planning, and long-term capital investments. This makes enrollment (and the underlying demographic shifts) a fiscal issue.
To help support intermediate budget planning both at the system and school levels, the D.C. Policy Center has updated its five-year enrollment projections for D.C.’s public schools. The results point to a system that is more stable than headlines might suggest but increasingly bifurcated by grade level.
Bigger cohorts moving up
Over the past three years (school years 2022-23 to 2024-25), total public school enrollment increased by 2,809[iii] students, or 3.2 percent (an average of 1.6 percent per year). However, growth varied by grade bands, and was concentrated among upper grades: high school enrollment grew by approximately 9 percent during this three-year period, and middle school enrollment grew by 4 percent. By contrast, elementary enrollment grew at about half the rate of middle schools (by 2.1 percent), and pre-kindergarten enrollment grew at about half the rate of elementary.
This divergence reflects cohort size, and not sudden changes in family preferences regarding public schools or school quality. Larger birth cohorts from earlier years are now progressing into middle and high school. Smaller cohorts are entering earlier grades.
The base is shrinking—a slow but unforgiving arithmetic
- Since 2016, births to D.C. residents have declined between 2 and 3 percent annually, with sharper declines in Ward 8.
- The largest recent cohort is now roughly in fourth grade. Behind it, cohorts are smaller.
- D.C. Policy Center now projects that births will continue to decline through 2026. Demographic modeling suggests a slight recovery after that.
The flows are steady
- Revealing GPR patterns (move all methodological explanations, smoothing, etc. to the bottom). The patterns are revealing:
- Roughly 60 percent of resident births translate into PK3 enrollment.
- Once students enroll, progression from one grade to another through elementary and middle grades approaches 100 percent.
- In short, the system is retaining students. The challenge is fewer students at the front door. This distinction matters. Attrition would signal dissatisfaction or systemic weakness. Smaller entering cohorts signal demographic contraction, an issue in D.C. and across the country.
Five-year projections: Stability overall, divergence underneath
- Combining birth projections with recent GPRs yields a nuanced outlook, total enrollment declines slightly—by about 743 students over five years (less than 1 percent).
- Pre-kindergarten falls the most, declining by roughly 1,707 students.
- Elementary stabilizes briefly, then begins to decline more noticeably after school year 2026-27.
- Middle and high school continue to grow as larger cohorts age upward.
- Aggregate stability can mask localized strain. The system as a whole appears stable. Individual schools, particularly those concentrated in early grades, may experience sharper contraction.
- These projections use school year 2024-25 as a baseline. The recent release of audited enrollment numbers for school year 2025-26 is aligned with projections for lower enrollment in earlier grades, and a continued slight increase in upper grades.
Budget implications: Small shifts, large effects
Because funding flows on a per-pupil basis, even modest enrollment changes matter. Planning becomes more complex when one end of the system contracts while the other expands.
- Declines in PK and elementary grades may:
- Raise per-pupil fixed costs at under-enrolled schools
- Trigger classroom consolidation and staffing adjustments
- Intensify questions about facility utilization
- Meanwhile, secondary growth may:
- Sustain demand for specialized staffing
- Increase need for advanced coursework and extracurricular programming
- Pressure high school capacity in select neighborhoods
What could change the trajectory?
Projections assume relative stability in underlying demographic and economic patterns. Several factors could meaningfully alter outcomes.
Housing
Housing supply can serve as a leading indicator of family population growth. Building permits were down 18.8 percent as of October 2025 compared to the previous year, and units under construction have fallen to roughly one-third of 2022 levels, with no improvements in sight.
If fewer family-sized units are built—or affordability pressures persist—early-grade enrollment may decline faster than projected. Conversely, a pivot toward family-oriented housing could moderate losses.
Migration
From 2020 to 2025, net migration averaged 1,084 annually. Domestic out-migration has remained materially negative since the pandemic. International migration spiked in 2023 but declined by 2025, weakening its offsetting effect.
Federal workforce reductions that D.C. has already experienced and immigration policy could further dampen inflows. This could mean these enrollment projections are too optimistic.
Labor market conditions
Employment in D.C. has not fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Rising unemployment—up roughly 0.4 percentage points on average between 2022 and 2025—can influence both household formation and residential decisions.
Weaker labor demand may reduce the inflow of families with children. At the same time, economic pressure could shift some students from private to public schools.
Private school participation
According to the American Community Survey (via EdScape data from the U.S. Census Bureau), about 16 percent of students attended private schools in 2019.
No sustained evidence of large-scale sector flight in either direction. Survey-based data should be interpreted cautiously, but current patterns do not suggest dramatic shifts that would meaningfully alter projections.
Enrollment projections point to a manageable adjustment—if acknowledged early
- The projections do not point to collapse. They point to adjustment.
- Total enrollment is roughly flat. The pressure is concentrated in early grades, driven by a smaller birth base rather than declining retention. That distinction gives policymakers time—but not unlimited time—to adapt.
- For schools, realism about early-grade contraction can inform staffing and facility planning. Entry-grade waitlists may offer early signals of school-specific resilience.
- For the District, continued investment in public school quality remains central. Recent learning gains and enrollment resilience relative to national trends are strengths. Universal pre-kindergarten remains a policy lever to attract and retain young families. High school pathways—dual enrollment, technical education, career preparation—help anchor older students.
- Demography shapes the options set. Policy determines how well the system responds within it.
- The next five years will test whether D.C.’s education system can right-size thoughtfully while preserving quality—and whether the city can remain attractive to the families it hopes to serve.
Methodology
To project future enrollment in D.C.’s public schools, the D.C. Policy Center monitors two trends: the base for enrollment and the flows over time. The base for enrollment is created by the number of births to families in D.C. in previous years.The flow is the share of these families to enroll initially in pre-kindergarten, which is universal in D.C. beginning at age 3, and later in compulsory kindergarten, and the shares that persist through elementary, middle, and high school grades.
To estimate future enrollment, the D.C. Policy Center employed a two-step methodology combining birth projections with grade ratio modeling.
- Birth Projections
The D.C. Policy Center first projected resident births using an ARIMA (AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average) time-series model in an earlier publication using data from the past ten years – “Projecting future births and young children in D.C” published in December 2025.[iv] ARIMA models are commonly used in demographic forecasting because they incorporate historical trends and patterns to estimate future values. These projections form the foundation for forecasting future PK3 enrollment cohorts.
- Grade Progression Ratios (GPRs)
To project enrollment beyond entry grades, the D.C. Policy Center adapted the Grade Progression Ratio (GPR) methodology used by the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education (DME).[v] GPR is widely used in enrollment forecasting because prior enrollment is often the strongest predictor of future enrollment.
GPR measures how student counts change as cohorts advance from one grade to the next. For example, the PK3 to PK4 GPR for school year 2024-25 is calculated as:
Number of PK4 students in SY2024-25 ÷ Number of PK3 students in SY2023-24
The D.C. Policy Center calculated three-year average GPRs to smooth year-to-year volatility and applied these averages to project enrollment forward by grade and grade band.
[i] Government of the District of Columbia, Muriel Bower, Mayor. 2026. Mayor Bowser Presents Grow DC: Our Fiscal Year 2026 Budget. Government of the District of Columbia. Retrieved from https://mayor.dc.gov/page/mayor-bowser-presents-grow-dc-our-fiscal-year-2026-budget
[ii] Fiscal impact statement on the FY 2026 Budget Support Act, available at https://app.cfo.dc.gov/services/fiscal_impact/pdf/spring09/FIS%20Fiscal%20Year%202026%20Budget%20Support%20Act%20of%202025_2nd%20Reading.pdf
[iii] Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE). 2025. OSSE Enrollment Audit 2025. Retrieved from https://osse.dc.gov/page/2024-25-school-year-enrollment-audit-report-and-data
[iv] Imran, Anoosha. 2025. Chart of the week: Projecting future births and young children in D.C. Retrieved from https://www.dcpolicycenter.org/publications/chart-of-the-week-projecting-future-births-and-young-children-in-dc/
[v] Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education (DME). 2026. “EdScape: Grade Progression Ratio.” DME. Retrieved from https://edscape.dc.gov/page/grade-progression-ratio