Los Angeles School Enrollment Drops Further as ICE Raids Add to Existing Decline

The numbers

Enrollment in the Los Angeles Unified School District fell to 392,654 students for the 2025-26 school year, a 4 percent drop from the prior year. District officials said the decline was larger than they had projected. Newcomer enrollment for students expected to return stood at 16,668, down 9 percent from the 18,232 the district had planned for. A September board presentation put overall enrollment at 373,538, nearly 1 percent below the figure used in the adopted budget. That gap is estimated to reduce state revenue by roughly $60 million.

Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said the drop is deeply connected to the realities immigrant families face. Other large districts that have seen increased immigration enforcement, including Miami-Dade and Chicago, have also reported enrollment losses. The pattern follows a January 2025 policy change that allowed immigration raids at or near schools.

How the raids affect classrooms

At 93rd Street Elementary in the Green Meadows neighborhood of South Los Angeles, the school started the year with about 480 students after summer operations near the campus. Staff outreach brought the number back to 740 by October, but the campus still finished the year at 725, down from 786 the year before. At Sara Coughlin Elementary in Pacoima, a school psychologist reported a referral load that did not match the smaller student body.

In Moreno Valley, parents described multiple enforcement sightings near Sunnymead Elementary on a single morning in early November. One parent said her son’s classroom had 35 students the week before his birthday but only 11 cupcakes came home, which she took as a sign that families were keeping children away. Some parents have begun offering rides for students whose families are hesitant to leave home.

Longer-term pressures

The immigration-related losses sit on top of trends that were already reducing enrollment across California. Falling birth rates, rising housing costs and broader economic pressure had led projections of a statewide drop of about 2 million students by 2030. District leaders now say the additional effect of enforcement activity will force more campus closures than previously planned. Virtual schooling has been discussed as one way to keep students connected when families fear in-person attendance.

The revenue loss from lower enrollment compounds budget pressure at a time when the district must still cover fixed costs. Officials have not yet released a full list of campuses that will close, but they have indicated that the combination of demographic decline and the recent drop in immigrant children makes further consolidations likely. The 4 percent decline in a single year is the clearest recent measure of how enforcement activity has moved from neighborhood streets into the daily count of students in classrooms.