Alabama public schools are seeing their steepest enrollment decline in 40 years — a drop expected to cost the state 500 to 700 teacher positions next year, according to State Superintendent Eric Mackey.
“This will be the largest reduction we’ve had in the last four decades,” Mackey told the Alabama State Board of Education Thursday (Oct. 9), emphasizing that the numbers are not yet final. “About 5,000 students lost when it’s all said and done.”
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Mackey said the reduction in students will directly affect funding for teachers.
“Teacher jobs are tied to student enrollment,” he said.
“This is between 500 to 700 teacher jobs that will disappear next year as we work on the next budget cycle. So it’s a big impact.”
Mackey said the department estimates about 3,000 students left public schools to use CHOOSE Act education savings accounts for private or home schooling.
“That was not unexpected,” he said. “That’s already been reported in the media.”
‘They just disappeared’
But another 2,100 students are unaccounted for.
“We have essentially 2,100 kids that were enrolled last year that just didn’t show up,” he said. “They didn’t transfer to a private school, they didn’t go to homeschool, they didn’t go to school in another state. They just disappeared.”
Superintendents across the state have told Mackey that most of the missing students are Hispanic, but schools do not verify student immigration status.
“We don’t know if they’re still living in this state and just not going to school, if they have moved to another state and did not enroll there, or if they left the country,” he said. “We don’t know if they were documented or undocumented, because under federal law we are not allowed to ask, and we don’t ask.”
One of the districts with Alabama’s largest Hispanic student populations — Albertville City Schools, where 60% of students are Hispanic — told ADN enrollment is down about 190 students this year.
“While part of that decline includes Hispanic students, the change is not entirely related to demographic shifts,” Superintendent Bart Reeves said. “A portion of the decrease stems from the district’s strengthened enforcement of out-of-district expectations and requirements.”
In 2024-25, Albertville enrolled 3,505 Hispanic students. This year’s total is 3,416, a decline of 89 students. Reeves said most of the Hispanic students who withdrew were “in good standing but relocated to either other states, nearby districts or their countries of origin.”
“While we have seen some movement among families, overall enrollment patterns and district demographics remain largely consistent,” Reeves said.
Mackey said one thing he is concerned about is that some families might be keeping children home temporarily.
“If those students all come back to us in January and they missed a semester of instruction, we’re going to teach them,” he said. “But the sooner they get back in school, the quicker we can catch them up and move them forward.”
He added, “If those young people are living in this state and just not going to school, I would implore publicly parents to get them back in school.”
Deadline
Districts have until next Friday to correct data errors before district-level numbers become public, but Mackey said he doesn’t expect major changes in the final count.
Mackey said only about a dozen districts grew in enrollment this year.
“Pretty much everybody else has lost students across the board, and some have lost significant numbers of students,” he said.
Gov. Kay Ivey’s office said the state remains focused on student achievement despite the decline in enrollment and the future loss of teaching positions. The governor is president of the board of education.
“Gov. Ivey maintains her goal of ensuring every student in Alabama has the opportunity to receive a quality education,” Communications Director Gina Maiola said in a statement to Alabama Daily News. “That includes having the best teachers in our classrooms. The continuous increase in our students’ test scores prove what we are doing is working.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Trisha Powell Crain and originally published by Alabama Daily News.
