Baltimore County Public Schools have 1,500 fewer students than officials thought they’d have this school year, continuing a local and nationwide downward trend in enrollment since the pandemic.

A report prepared for Tuesday’s school board meeting shows the school system now has 110,066 students, 218 fewer than last school year. It was once projected that Baltimore County would have 111,575 students by now.

“The lasting impact of COVID-19 on historical enrollment trends has caused larger differences in enrollment accuracy in the past five years compared to the three years prior,” the report states.

All elementary grades in Baltimore County have fewer students than expected, except for first grade and pre-K for 4-year-olds.

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Elementary school enrollment projections were off by only 378 students; middle and high school projections were off by 1,131. Ninth grade was the only grade to gain students on the secondary level.

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Public school enrollment around the country has dipped since the pandemic. That was when parents got a peek inside their kids’ classrooms while they were forced to learn virtually to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Some started to rethink how education should look, reported the Brookings Institution, a national research think tank. Nationally, the proportion of families homeschooling went from 2.8% in 2019 to 11.1% in the fall of 2020. Among Washington, D.C., and the 33 states reviewed by the Urban Institute, another research think tank, private school enrollment increased by 4.3% between 2019 and 2021.

A December report from the National Center for Education Statistics shows public school enrollment across the nation dropped 0.2% between 2022 and 2023. Pre-K through eighth grade dropped by 0.4%. And high school enrollment dropped by 0.1%.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the proportion of families nationally that were homeschooling in 2019.

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.