Districts from Philadelphia to Los Angeles have large numbers of schools that lost at least 20% of their students during the pandemic.

Days before Christmas, the school board in Jackson, Mississippi, voted to close 11 schools and merge two more — a drastic move that parents in the district had long feared. Some on the list have lost 30% or more of their students since 2018.

Despite the district’s high poverty, Superintendent Errick Greene said he could no longer afford to staff social workers and counselors at schools with long stretches of declining enrollment. Many older buildings were falling apart. It made no sense, he said, to have plumbers and HVAC technicians “racing hither and yon across the city” each morning to keep them running.

“Should we really be investing this money in these school buildings if they’re at best at half capacity?” he asked.

Such questions are weighing heavily on district leaders throughout the country. Fresh from the academic struggles that followed the pandemic, and with federal relief funds soon to run out, they now confront a massive enrollment crisis.

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A shorter student roster each year might not make headlines, but it could serve as a harbinger of things to come, Goulas said. Administrators in shrinking schools often must merge classrooms, eliminate jobs or rely on donations to save popular sports or music programs.