School enrollment falls, surprising district

BY ERIN GRETZINGER

An annual enrollment tally at the Madison school district declined by more than 100 students this fall, marking the first decrease in two years and falling far below the district’s own estimates that predicted an increase for the 2025-26 school year.

Across Wisconsin, every school tallies its enrollment on the third Friday of September to help determine state funding levels for districts. This year, the Madison Metropolitan School District counted 25,557 full-time equivalent students. That’s down 110 from last fall.

In its 2025-26 budget projections from May, the school district estimated September enrollment would increase to 25,750 full-time equivalent students, meaning Madison schools fell short by nearly 200 full-time equivalent students.

“I gotta say, I’m a little disappointed,” Bob Soldner, the district’s assistant superintendent of financial services, said at the School Board’s recent meeting. “I was hoping we would continue our trajectory upwards.”

In an interview, Soldner said he is confident this year’s drop will not become a trend. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the district’s enrollment steadily declined for several years before stabilizing and rising again the past two school years.

“At some point, we’re going to see a significant increase in our student enrollment,” Solder said. “It’s just we need to develop new ways of projecting accurately which third Friday count is going to go up.”

In 2022, the Applied Population Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison projected the district would experience an average drop of 10% over the next five years. The lab estimated the Madison school district’s headcount enrollment would be 23,696 this year and 22,739 by 2027-2028.

The district has chosen not to use the Applied Population Lab projections because of its reliance on birth rates as the main factor, Soldner said.

“Those models have been showing what I would call significant declines in our student enrollment in current years, in the last few years, and looking forward five, 10, 15 years out,” he said. “Clearly that’s not our reality, however, and so I’ve really not been using them.”

Soldner questioned the accuracy of birth rate projections considering Madison’s overall forecasted population growth. Some indicators, such as growing 4K enrollments, a bigger kindergarten class this year, and larger graduating classes than incoming freshman classes, are positive for the district’s enrollment outlook, he said.

“We’re going to have families moving to the Dane County area, or young couples that want to start a family in the Dane County area, particularly Madison metropolitan residents,” he said. “So I don’t expect us to decline like the projections have been showing us.”

Rather than birth rate trends, Soldner said the district relies on other factors such as actual enrollment, attendance and retention rates from grade to grade. The district formed a committee to improve its formula for predicting enrollment, and district officials are working more closely with city planners and developers to better understand population trends.

Sarah Kemp, the researcher at the Applied Population Lab who authored the 2022 projections, said the focus on development and population growth makes sense for the Madison school district. At the time of the 2022 report, Kemp said, many of the lab’s reports for public school districts projected steep declines amid the pandemic as part of a nationwide trend.

“The projections were tough during that time frame, not only for Madison, but many, many, many districts around the state,” she said.

Still, Kemp said it is “very difficult” to determine how property development affects enrollment. Some migration can be tracked with influxes in grade levels outside typical retention patterns. The type of housing being built can also help gauge where families may move, like the amount of two- to three- bedroom units versus one-bedrooms and studios, Kemp said.

But those numbers only go so far. A 2019 study conducted for the school district found that while the school district’s residential population grew by 100,000 people from the 1980s to the 2010s, the district’s enrollment remained largely stagnant.

Birth rates could also be a potential factor in the Madison school district’s enrollment decline this year, Kemp said. Wisconsin’s birth rate has slowly declined over the last two decades, similar to the downward trend nationwide. Dane County’s birth rate is slightly lower than the state average.

“You don’t want to be stuck flat footed, and then not having enough room for all your students, so it’s a balance,” Kemp said. “I don’t envy the district in trying to determine those future plans.”

Soldner said he thought enrollment would go up this year because schools experienced increasing enrollment toward the end of last year. He’d like more information from developers to better forecast enrollment, including how many families with school-age children are moving into new apartment complexes and where the families are moving from.

If families are coming from out-of-state or another city outside of the district’s attendance area, that would increase enrollment. But if they are moving a few blocks or within the city, the big-picture numbers wouldn’t shift.

“There’s no certain way of projecting enrollments, but you try to get as close as you can when it comes to budgeting,” he said. “I think we’ve done a pretty good job with that the last few years.”

The unexpected enrollment drop won’t significantly affect the district’s budget plans for this school year due to how the state calculates funding limits and a boost in special education aid, Soldner said. The district’s final budget for the year will be voted on at its meeting next Monday.

This spring, the district plans to begin construction on the first round of new school buildings approved by voters in the 2024 referendum. While it’s unclear whether enrollment at those schools will increase in the near-term, Soldner said the new buildings will address concerns with aging facilities and prepare for anticipated growth in the long-term.

Some Madison schools have seen enrollment increases, Soldner said, though he didn’t specify which ones in an interview.

“Would our population change so much that we might not need the infrastructure that we currently have now? I just don’t see that happening,” Soldner said. “I think we’re going to need every building that we have today and probably … more facilities and more capacity as we move to the future.”

“I gotta say, I’m a little disappointed. I was hoping we would continue our trajectory upwards.”

Bob Soldner, the district’s assistant superintendent of financial services

Students arrive for the first day of classes at Orchard Ridge Elementary School, part of the Madison Metropolitan School District.

RUTHIE HAUGE