Board hears data showing multi-year enrollment decline; presenters point to fewer births, out-migration and housing choices

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools board heard data showing a steady drop in student enrollment since the 2019–20 school year, driven by declining births, out-migration of school-age children and a growing diversification of educational market share.

Nathan Dollar of the Carolina Population Center told the board the district’s average daily membership (ADM) “has steadily declined since the 2019–20 school year,” and that the pandemic years produced the sharpest losses: “you lost 540 kids in just that 1 year,” he said. Dollar said the district’s five-year change represents roughly an 8.7 percent drop in K–12 ADM, and that the largest declines were concentrated in kindergarten and the early elementary grades.

Dollar attributed the decline in part to fewer births in the Chapel Hill–Carrboro area (he reported 572 births to local residents in the latest year shown) and to falling kindergarten-to-birth ratios, meaning fewer families with preschool-age children are moving into the district. He also described a measurable loss of market share: using local estimates, the district’s market share dropped from about 94 percent in 2019 to roughly 91.7 percent in later years.

Presenters said students left the district for several reasons. Charter enrollment billed to the district rose significantly—Dollar cited a 27 percent increase in charter billing between fiscal years 2021 and 2024—and homeschool and private-school enrollments also rose during and after the pandemic. “We know that some of this… some of the 1,000 students that you lost between 2019 and 2020 went to homeschools,” Dollar said.

Aaron Nelson, president of the Chamber for Greater Chapel Hill–Carrboro, told the board housing dynamics and the type of new construction are key local drivers. He said many recent units are studios or one-bedroom apartments and that there were “600 fewer transactions” over a recent period, reducing turnover that historically put family-sized homes back on the market. “If you build product that families with children didn’t find terribly attractive,” Nelson said, “you won’t get kids.”

Board members pressed presenters on data and next steps. Several asked whether cohort tracking and grade-progression ratios could show whether particular birth-year cohorts were persistently smaller; Dollar recommended linking entry/exit coding to student PowerSchool IDs and reassessing projections annually. He also urged the district to track precisely which institutions students move to so the district can measure losses to charters, private schools and homeschools.

Presenters recommended practical responses: modernize data infrastructure to permit cohort and grade-progression analysis, code student exits and returns carefully, consider targeted marketing to retain and attract students, and engage more actively with county land‑use and housing planning to increase family‑suitable housing near the district. The board and presenters also discussed existing tools such as the principal’s monthly report (PMR2) and National Student Clearinghouse data for post‑graduation tracking.

The meeting concluded with presenters offering follow-up help and the board noting the value of publicly sharing the session so the community can better understand the drivers of enrollment change. The board did not adopt formal policy changes during the presentation; presenters recommended further analysis and annual updates to enrollment projections.