EdTribune AL - Alabama Education Data

Mobile County Has Lost One in Five Students

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In this series: Alabama 2025-26 Enrollment.

Mobile County^↗ enrolled 46,700 students in 2025-26. That is 11,829 fewer than the 58,529 it enrolled in 2015-16, a loss of 20.2% in a decade. No other district in Alabama has shed more students in raw numbers over the same period. And no year in the 10-year streak, not even the mildest one, produced a gain.

The district remains the state's largest, but the gap is narrowing. Mobile's share of Alabama's total public school enrollment has slipped from 7.8% to 6.5% since 2015. At the average rate of loss over the past decade, 1,183 students per year, the district will fall below 45,000 within two years.

Ten years without a single gain

The decline has been remarkably consistent. Even the "best" year in the streak, 2019-20, saw a loss of 215 students. The worst was 2023-24, when Mobile shed 2,203 students, a 4.4% single-year drop that erased more students than some Alabama districts enroll in total.

Before the streak began, Mobile was growing. The district added 1,293 students in 2015-16, pushing enrollment to its data-era peak. Then the reversal began immediately: a loss of 1,493 in 2016-17, followed by 1,699 in 2017-18. The early losses alone exceeded 3,000 students in two years.

The pace has not followed a straight line. Losses moderated around the pandemic, when Mobile lost a relatively mild 215 students in 2019-20 and 880 in 2020-21. But after 2021, the decline reaccelerated. The three-year stretch from 2022 through 2024 erased 4,701 students, nearly 40% of the entire decade's losses compressed into three years.

Not just Mobile, but Mobile most of all

Mobile is not alone among Alabama's large districts in losing students. Birmingham has lost 24.5% of its enrollment since 2016. Montgomery County has lost 19.9%. Jefferson County, the state's second-largest, is down 9.2%.

But Mobile's losses are the largest in absolute terms. The 11,829 students it has lost since 2016 nearly match Birmingham's losses (6,248) and Montgomery's (6,171) combined. Only two of the state's 10 largest districts have grown over the same period: Madison City, up 26.3%, and Madison County, up 1.6%. Both are in the Huntsville metro area, a region buoyed by aerospace and defense employment that has attracted families while the rest of the state shrinks.

Fewer white students, fewer Black students

Demographic data, available through 2024-25, shows that Mobile's losses are not concentrated in one racial group. Both white and Black enrollment have fallen substantially. White enrollment dropped from 25,338 to 17,525 between 2016 and 2025, a loss of 7,813 students (30.8%). Black enrollment fell from 29,484 to 24,070, a loss of 5,414 (18.4%).

The two groups are shrinking at different rates, which has shifted the district's composition. White students made up 41.9% of Mobile's race-reported enrollment in 2016; by 2025, that share had dropped to 34.6%. Black students held relatively steady as a share, slipping from 48.7% to 47.5%.

Hispanic enrollment is the one growth area. Mobile enrolled 3,262 Hispanic students in 2025, up from 1,995 in 2016, a gain of 63.5%. But the absolute numbers are small relative to the losses in other groups. Hispanic students have gone from 3.3% to 6.4% of enrollment, but their 1,267-student increase replaces only a fraction of the 13,227 students lost across white and Black enrollment.

Multiracial enrollment has also grown, from 1,265 to 3,558, though some of that growth reflects reclassification rather than new arrivals, as families select multiple racial categories on updated federal reporting forms.

Where the students went

Several forces are pulling students out of Mobile County Public Schools simultaneously, making it difficult to attribute the decline to a single cause.

The most direct is population stagnation. Mobile County's population has barely moved in 16 years, growing just 0.05% from 413,328 in 2010 to an estimated 413,527. A flat population with a declining school-age share, driven by lower birth rates nationally, means fewer children entering the pipeline each year.

Alabama's CHOOSE Act, which took effect for the 2025-26 school year, added a new exit ramp. The education savings account program provides $7,000 per student for private school tuition or other educational expenses. Statewide, roughly 3,032 public school students received CHOOSE Act scholarships after leaving public schools in 2025-26, out of 23,429 total recipients. Three-quarters of recipients had already been enrolled in private schools. The program's county-by-county impact on public enrollment is not yet broken out in public data, but Mobile County, as the state's largest district, is likely absorbing a disproportionate share of the departures.

A third factor is harder to measure. State Superintendent Eric Mackey told Alabama Daily News that roughly 2,100 students statewide had disappeared from enrollment records entirely, with no documentation of transferring to a private school or homeschooling. "They are not on the radar anywhere," Mackey said. "They did not show up for school public or private." Superintendents initially reported that most of these missing students were Hispanic, though Mackey later clarified that the state actually gained 300 Hispanic students year over year.

A shrinking slice of a shrinking pie

Mobile's decline is outpacing the state's. Alabama as a whole has lost 4.7% of its enrollment since 2016, falling from 749,897 to 714,363. Mobile has lost 20.2% over the same period, more than four times the state rate. The result is a steady erosion of Mobile's share of state enrollment, from 7.8% to 6.5%.

That shrinking share carries fiscal weight. Alabama distributes state education funding through the Foundation Program, which allocates resources based on student counts. Fewer students means fewer state dollars, even as fixed costs for building maintenance, transportation routes, and administrative staff do not shrink at the same rate. Mobile's 2024-25 budget fell to $804 million, a 17.5% drop from the prior year's $975 million, driven largely by the expiration of federal COVID relief funding that had masked the enrollment decline's fiscal impact for several years.

What comes next

The CHOOSE Act's first-year effect is now baked into the 2025-26 numbers, and the 666-student loss Mobile recorded this year is the second-mildest in the streak, behind only the 215-student dip in 2019-20. Whether that moderation holds or represents a one-year pause before deeper losses resume will depend on how many additional families use the ESA program in year two, whether Alabama's projected 500 teacher position reductions statewide fall disproportionately on large declining districts, and whether Mobile's flat population continues to translate into fewer school-age children.

The district's kindergarten pipeline offers a clue. If incoming cohorts remain smaller than graduating ones, the structural math guarantees further decline regardless of policy changes. Mobile enrolled 57,236 students when this dataset begins in 2014-15. It now enrolls 46,700. The question is no longer whether the decline will continue, but how far it goes before the district stabilizes at a fundamentally different size.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Phillip Brooks Takes the Helm at a School That Rewrote Its Own Name

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Phillip Brooks is the new principal of Johnson Abernathy Graetz High School in Montgomery, the second-largest school in Montgomery Public Schools^↗ and one that carries a name chosen to honor the civil rights movement that shaped the city.

"It is an honor to serve as principal of Johnson Abernathy Graetz High School and to lead a community with such a rich history and purpose," Brooks said in a statement released by the district. "My focus is on building strong relationships, creating a safe and supportive environment, and ensuring every student has access to the opportunities and resources they need to succeed."

Brooks succeeds Carlos Hammonds, who was appointed principal in July 2023 shortly after the school's renaming. MPS describes Brooks as a veteran educator with a background in school leadership, student support, and community engagement.

A school with a new identity

JAG High School operated as Jefferson Davis High School for more than 50 years before the Montgomery Public Schools board voted 5-2 in November 2022 to rename it. The school now honors three figures from Montgomery's civil rights history: Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr., the federal judge whose rulings helped dismantle segregation; Ralph Abernathy, the pastor and close associate of Martin Luther King Jr.; and Rev. Robert Graetz, the white Lutheran minister who supported the Montgomery Bus Boycott and whose home was bombed for it. The school unveiled its new mascot, the Jaguars, in July 2023.

The renaming placed a marker: this is a school that decided to reckon with its own history. Brooks will lead a campus of roughly 1,466 students where the work of defining what comes after that reckoning is still underway.

The district Brooks joins

Superintendent Dr. Zickeyous Byrd, who arrived in May 2025 from Selma City Schools, expressed confidence in the appointment.

"Johnson Abernathy Graetz High School carries a powerful legacy, and it is critical that we continue moving that legacy forward with strong, student-centered leadership," Byrd said. "Mr. Brooks is a relationship-driven leader who understands the importance of accountability, academic growth, and community connection. I am confident in his ability to lead JAG into its next chapter and deliver meaningful results for our students and families."

Montgomery Public Schools is navigating enrollment shifts that give that confidence particular weight. The district has posted 10 consecutive years of decline, falling from a peak of 31,082 students in 2016 to 24,911 in 2026, a loss of nearly 6,200 students.

JAG's own trajectory mirrors the district pattern. Enrollment fell from 1,933 in 2015 to a low of 1,427 in 2025 before ticking up slightly to 1,466 this year. That small rebound, during a year when the district as a whole lost another 580 students, is a data point worth watching.

The demographic composition of JAG's student body reflects the broader district. Montgomery Public Schools is roughly 76% Black, 14% Hispanic, and 8% white as of 2025. The district's English learner population has more than doubled since 2016, reaching 3,155 students, or about 12% of enrollment, a shift that touches staffing, curriculum, and the daily work of building a school culture.

What Brooks named first

In his statement, Brooks listed his priorities in a specific order: relationships, then safety, then access to resources. He closed with attendance and academic outcomes.

"Together, we will work to strengthen attendance, improve academic outcomes, and empower every student to reach their full potential," he said.

The attendance reference is not incidental. JAG earned a D grade from the Alabama State Department of Education in 2023-24, up from an F the prior year, a trajectory that suggests momentum even if the starting point is low. Brooks inherits a school that has shown it can move in the right direction.

Montgomery Public Schools is in a period of reinvention under Byrd's "Vision 2026" strategic plan, which includes converting two elementary schools into full magnet programs and establishing a workforce development center. Brooks will lead one of the district's largest campuses through that transition, in a school that already proved it is willing to change what it calls itself. The harder question, the one every new principal faces, is whether the work inside the building can match the ambition of the name on the outside.

Phillip Brooks did not respond to a separate request for comment. Rosanna Smith Brewton, MPS Director of Communications, provided the district's official statement on his behalf.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Data source

Data from the Alabama State Department of Education, accessed via the ALEdTribune data archive.

White Students Drop Below 50% in Alabama for First Time

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In this series: Alabama 2025-26 Enrollment.

In the late 1990s, nearly two out of three students in Alabama public schools were white. By 2016, that share had fallen to 55.6%. In 2024-25, it reached 50.0%, dropping below the majority threshold for the first time in the state's history of racial enrollment reporting.

The crossing is narrow: white students comprised 402,422 of the 805,263 students identified by race, a share of 49.97% before rounding. But the direction is unambiguous. White enrollment has declined every year for a decade, shedding 43,801 students since 2016, a 9.8% drop. No single year produced a cliff. The decline averaged about 0.6 percentage points annually, then accelerated to 1.2 points in 2024 before settling back to 0.8 points in 2025.

Alabama is not unusual in this. Nationally, white students fell below 50% of public school enrollment in 2014. But Alabama held the line longer than many Southern peers. The state now joins a list that includes South Carolina, Virginia, and Florida where the demographic math has tipped within the last decade.

The growth that offset the loss

White and Black enrollment both fell since 2016: white by 43,801 students, Black by 23,725. Together, the state's two largest racial groups lost 67,526 students. What kept Alabama's total enrollment from collapsing even faster was growth in three smaller groups.

Hispanic enrollment nearly doubled, rising from 52,233 to 87,790, a gain of 35,557 students and a 68.1% increase. Multiracial enrollment more than doubled, growing from 18,460 to 42,305, a gain of 23,845 (up 129.2%). Students identified as Native American grew by 10,348, a 51.1% increase, though this figure likely reflects reclassification patterns rather than population growth of that magnitude.

The combined gains of 69,750 students in these three groups nearly matched the combined losses of 67,526 among white and Black students. The state's student body did not shrink because one group left. It transformed because three groups grew while two contracted.

Where Hispanic growth reshaped districts

The statewide Hispanic share reached 10.9% in 2025, up from 6.5% nine years earlier. But the average masks concentration. In Albertville^↗, Hispanic students constitute 38.1% of race-reported enrollment. In Russellville^↗, they are 38.5%. In Decatur^↗, 27.5%.

These are poultry-processing communities in north Alabama, where the industry has drawn Hispanic families for decades. Albertville's district enrolls roughly 5,800 students. When Haitian immigrants began arriving in 2024 under expanded federal protections, the district enrolled 110 new students in a single year.

That growth has now stalled. Superintendent Bart Reeves told Alabama Daily News in November 2025 that the district's newcomer academy had stopped enrolling new students entirely.

"That's just not happening this year with the closure of the border." -- Alabama Daily News, Nov. 2025

Reeves estimated the enrollment decline would cost the district roughly 12 teaching positions. The state provides $488 per English learner annually, with federal funding adding just $89 per student. For districts that built staffing around a growing EL population, a reversal in immigration patterns creates immediate fiscal pressure.

Thirteen districts flipped from white-majority to majority-minority between 2016 and 2025. Albertville's swing was the largest: from 56.4% white to 32.6%, a 23.8-point shift driven almost entirely by Hispanic growth. Boaz, another poultry-belt district, swung 16.7 points. Florence, Tuscaloosa County, and Decatur each shifted more than 7 points.

The multiracial question

The 129.2% growth in multiracial enrollment since 2016 is the largest percentage increase of any racial group. Some of this reflects genuinely rising rates of multiracial identification, consistent with national Census trends. But a significant share likely reflects how families answer race questions on school forms, not a change in who is sitting in classrooms.

In 2025-26, the federal government changed how schools collect race and ethnicity data. The new form, required by the Office of Management and Budget, replaced the old two-question format (one question on ethnicity, one on race) with a single question inviting respondents to check all identities that apply. The result was stark: the reported Hispanic count dropped by 56,196 while the "two or more races" category jumped by 52,627, a near-perfect offset.

"The number of students who checked the Hispanic box increased by about 1,000 statewide." -- Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama, Dec. 2025

State education officials concluded that many students who previously identified solely as Hispanic were now selecting Hispanic alongside another racial category, landing them in the multiracial bucket. The actual number of students with Hispanic heritage likely grew slightly. But the 2026 data, which contains only total enrollment and no demographics, means the full impact of this reclassification cannot yet be assessed against the longer trend.

The pre-2026 multiracial growth was real and substantial even before the form change: from 18,460 in 2016 to 42,305 in 2025, a period when the old two-question format was still in use. Federal reporting changes amplified an existing trend, but did not create it.

Two Alabamas on either side of 50%

The statewide crossing obscures how polarized Alabama's districts remain. Of 140 districts with at least 500 students reporting race data, 79 still have white majorities and 61 are majority-minority. The distribution is not a bell curve clustering near 50%. It is bimodal: a cluster of districts between 55% and 80% white, and another cluster below 35%.

At one extreme, Winston County is 96.0% white. Mountain Brook, the affluent Birmingham^↗ suburb, is 93.8%. At the other, Wilcox County in the Black Belt is 1.1% white. Selma is 1.4%. Birmingham City, the state's second-largest district with 22,482 race-reported students, is 5.2% white.

The geographic pattern tracks Alabama's historical racial geography almost exactly. Black Belt counties that were plantation centers remain overwhelmingly Black. Appalachian foothill counties remain overwhelmingly white. The demographic change is happening in the middle: mid-sized cities and suburban districts where Hispanic and multiracial growth is reshaping what were once binary Black-white enrollment profiles.

The Black enrollment paradox

Black students' share of enrollment fell from 31.5% to 28.4% between 2016 and 2025, a loss of 23,725 students. In absolute terms, this is the second-largest decline after white enrollment. Yet the Black share has been remarkably stable in the 28-31% band for a decade, because the denominator (total race-reported enrollment) is also shrinking.

The loss is concentrated in the Black Belt and in Alabama's three largest majority-Black urban systems. Mobile County^↗ lost more than 1,000 students in 2025-26 alone. Montgomery and Birmingham have each seen enrollment fall by roughly a fifth over the past decade. The Alabama Reflector reported in 2024 that across 17 rural Black Belt counties, student enrollment dropped 19.8% between 2014 and 2023, nearly eight times the statewide rate of decline.

The out-migration driving these losses is a multi-generational pattern. Young adults leave for employment in Huntsville, Birmingham's suburbs, or out of state entirely. Birth rates in rural Alabama have declined alongside national trends, with Alabama's overall fertility rate dropping to 57.9 per 1,000 women in 2023. The districts left behind face a compounding problem: fewer families means less state funding, which means fewer programs, which accelerates the next round of departures.

What the CHOOSE Act did not do

Alabama's CHOOSE Act, signed in March 2024, created education savings accounts worth roughly $7,000 per student. Given the timing, it is reasonable to ask whether ESA-driven departures contributed to white enrollment decline. The available evidence suggests the impact was modest.

Of the roughly 5,800 students who left Alabama public schools in the CHOOSE Act's first year, approximately 3,000 received ESA funds. But most ESA recipients were already enrolled in private schools. Of the 14,000 students who planned to use ESA funds for private school in 2025-26, about 10,000 (71%) were already attending one. Only 2,428 of 5,060 eligible public school students had activated their accounts as of September 2025, fewer than half.

The CHOOSE Act may accelerate white enrollment decline modestly in future years, especially if the Legislature expands the program to universal eligibility as proposed. But for now, the demographic shift predates and outpaces the voucher program. White enrollment fell by 43,801 students over nine years. The ESA program moved roughly 2,400 students from public to private in its first year. The trendline was set long before the CHOOSE Act existed.

What comes next

The 2026 data year contains only total enrollment, no demographic breakdowns. Whether white share dropped further, stabilized, or ticked back up cannot be determined until 2027 data is released. The new federal race reporting form adds another layer of uncertainty: the 2025-26 reclassification reshuffled tens of thousands of students between Hispanic and multiracial categories, making year-over-year demographic comparisons unreliable until the new methodology produces at least two consecutive years of data.

The question for Alabama's school leaders is not whether the state's public schools have become majority-minority. They have. The question is what comes after. In north Alabama poultry towns, immigration enforcement is reversing the Hispanic enrollment growth that sustained district budgets. In the Black Belt, depopulation continues with no policy intervention sufficient to reverse it. And in the suburbs, where the demographic change is newest and most contested, the CHOOSE Act's expansion could determine whether the public school system retains these families or loses them to a parallel private system.

The 50% line itself is a statistical artifact. Crossing it changes nothing about how a classroom operates or how a budget is built. But it marks the end of a demographic era in a state where the composition of public school enrollment has been a politically charged question for 70 years, and will remain one.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

714,363: Alabama Hits Its Lowest Enrollment in Over a Decade

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT

State Superintendent Eric Mackey put it plainly in October: "They're just gone." He was talking about roughly 2,100 students who were enrolled in Alabama public schools last year and simply did not return. No transfer paperwork, no homeschool filing, no private school record. They vanished from the rolls.

Alabama's total K-12 public school enrollment fell to 714,363 in 2025-26, the lowest point in at least 12 years of state data. The drop of 3,110 students from the prior year extends a four-year decline streak that has erased 21,445 students since 2021-22. At the current pace of loss, approximately 5,361 students per year over the past four years, enrollment will fall below 700,000 before the decade ends.

The state that grew, then didn't

Alabama's enrollment story breaks cleanly into three eras. From 2014-15 to 2017-18, the system added 7,744 students, peaking at 749,897 in 2015-16. From 2018-19 to 2021-22, it lost 3,656, a modest contraction centered on the pandemic year. Since 2022-23, the losses have quadrupled: 15,426 students gone in four years, with the single worst year being 2023-24, when enrollment fell by 11,073.

The year-over-year pattern is volatile but directionally unmistakable. Seven of the past nine years have been negative. The two exceptions, 2019-20 (+654) and 2021-22 (+6,022), were pandemic-adjacent bounces that did not hold.

Three forces, one direction

No single factor explains the decline. At least three forces are compounding simultaneously.

The most fundamental is demographic. Alabama's deaths have exceeded its births every year since 2020, with 59,273 deaths against 57,541 births in 2023-24 alone. The state's median age approaches 40. Kindergarten enrollment, the leading indicator of the enrollment pipeline, has fallen from 57,138 in 2014-15 to 55,329 in 2025-26, a decline of 3.2%. Meanwhile, 12th grade enrollment has grown 6.4% over the same period, from 50,140 to 53,346. The kindergarten-to-12th-grade ratio has compressed from 114 to 103.7. More students are graduating out the top of the pipeline than entering at the bottom.

The second force is school choice. The CHOOSE Act, Alabama's education savings account program signed into law in March 2024, drew approximately 3,032 students out of public schools in its first year, according to a PARCA analysis of state data. That accounts for roughly half of the 2025-26 decline. Nearly 24,000 students received ESAs for the current year, though about three-quarters were already in private schools. The Legislature increased the program's appropriation to $180 million and is considering making it universal, which could accelerate public school losses in coming years.

The third is immigration enforcement. Mackey told reporters that superintendents across the state said "a lot" of the missing students appeared to be Hispanic, though schools cannot legally ask about immigration status. In Birmingham, the Hispanic and Immigrant Center of Alabama reported that fear was keeping families home.

"There is a concern among families as to the safety of their children, and thus what we're seeing and we're hearing is a reluctance to send some of these students to school." -- Carlos Aleman, CEO of the Hispanic and Immigrant Center of Alabama, The Birmingham Times

The statewide data is ambiguous. A new federal reporting form that allows students to select multiple racial identities shifted about 52,000 students from "Hispanic" to "two or more races" in 2025-26, making it impossible to isolate actual Hispanic enrollment changes from reclassification effects. State officials said the raw number of students checking the Hispanic box increased by about 1,000, but the classification noise makes the true trend unclear.

The geography of loss

The losses are not evenly distributed. Mobile County^↗, the state's largest district, has shed 4,958 students since 2021-22, a decline of 9.6% in four years. From its 2015-16 peak of 58,529, Mobile has lost 11,829 students, a 20.2% contraction. Birmingham City^↗ has lost 6,248 from its peak, a 24.5% decline. Montgomery County^↗ is down 6,171, or 19.9%.

Nine districts have been declining for 11 consecutive years, the full span of the year-over-year data. Six of them are in or near the Black Belt: Selma City^↗, Perry County^↗, Sumter County^↗, Lowndes County^↗, Macon County^↗, and Wilcox County^↗. Perry County has lost 57.7% of its enrollment since 2014-15, falling from 1,730 to 731. Sumter is down 52.4%, from 1,695 to 806. These are districts where the school system is often the largest employer, and each lost student carries a proportional cut to state funding.

Only 31 of 141 districts with comparable data, or 22%, have recovered to their pre-pandemic enrollment levels. In 2025-26, 86 of 153 districts declined, while 65 grew.

What 500 to 700 fewer teachers means

The fiscal consequences are already materializing. Mackey told WBRC that the enrollment decline translates to 500 to 700 fewer teaching positions in the next budget cycle.

"Teacher jobs are tied to student enrollment, so this is about, this is between 500-700 teacher jobs that'll disappear next year as we work on the next budget cycle." -- Dr. Eric Mackey, State Superintendent, WBRC

The problem is structural. Alabama's Foundation Program, the funding formula that converts student counts into teacher units and teacher units into dollars, has been unchanged since 1995. It does not weight funding for English learners, students entitled to special education services, or students in high-poverty districts. Lawmakers are considering a shift to a weighted student funding model, but that reform has not yet advanced.

For districts already near the edge, a decline of a few dozen students can force the consolidation of classrooms, the closure of a school, or the elimination of an elective program. In rural Black Belt counties where enrollment has been falling for a decade or more, the question is not whether these cuts will happen but how many more years the district can absorb them.

The question for 2027

The most honest answer to why Alabama's enrollment is falling is: all of the above, and we cannot precisely apportion how much of the decline belongs to each factor. Birth rates explain the pipeline compression. The CHOOSE Act explains about 3,000 of the 2025-26 losses. Immigration enforcement appears to explain some of the missing students, but the reclassification of racial reporting makes the magnitude impossible to pin down from the enrollment data alone.

The question for the next school year is whether the CHOOSE Act's expansion to potentially universal eligibility compounds the demographic decline or merely accelerates a transition that was already underway. If 24,000 ESA recipients become 40,000 or more, and three-quarters of them continue to be students already in private schools, the marginal public school impact may remain modest. If the ratio shifts and more public school families opt out, the 700,000 threshold could arrive ahead of schedule.

Alabama has not been above 740,000 students since 2019-20. Fifty-one of its 155 districts are at their lowest enrollment on record. At some point, a decline stops being a trend and becomes the new baseline.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Alabama Publishes 2025-26 Enrollment Data

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In this series: Alabama 2025-26 Enrollment.

A year ago, Alabama's enrollment story had a silver lining. The state had lost students, yes, but the pace seemed to be slowing. The 2024-25 count of 717,473 was down from the prior year, though not by as much as the COVID-era drops. Some districts posted small gains. Huntsville held steady. State Superintendent Eric Mackey acknowledged the headwinds — birth rates, school choice, immigration — but the prevailing mood was that Alabama had found something close to a floor.

Then the Alabama State Department of Education posted its 2025-26 enrollment figures, and the floor gave way: 714,363 public school students, down 3,110 from the prior year. That extends a four-year decline streak to 21,445 lost students since the 2021-22 peak of 735,808. At the current pace, the state will fall below 700,000 before the decade ends. Whatever floor people thought they saw last year was not a floor.

What the numbers open up

The enrollment data covers 155 districts, from Huntsville's defense-driven suburbs to Black Belt counties where half the students have disappeared in a decade. Over the coming weeks, The ALEdTribune will unpack it in a series of data-driven articles. Here is what jumps out first.

Alabama just hit its lowest enrollment in 12 years of data. The 714,363 figure is not just lower than last year — it is the lowest point since at least 2014-15, when the state enrolled 732,698. The four-year decline of 21,445 students has erased a decade of modest growth, and the trajectory shows no sign of reversal.

White students dropped below 50% for the first time. In 2024-25, the white share of Alabama's public school enrollment fell to 49.97% — crossing below the majority line. Alabama is now a majority-minority state for public school enrollment, a demographic milestone a generation in the making.

Only one in five districts recovered from COVID. Of 135 districts with consistent data, just 29 have returned to their pre-pandemic enrollment levels. The other 106 are still below where they were in 2019-20, and most are falling further behind each year.

By the numbers: 714,363 students statewide in 2025-26 — down 21,445 from the 2021-22 peak, a 2.9% decline across four years and the lowest enrollment in over a decade of state data.

The threads we are following

The Black Belt is emptying out. Perry County has lost 57.7% of its students since 2014-15. Sumter County has lost 52.4%. Nine districts have declined every single year for 11 consecutive years — the full span of available data — and six of them are Black Belt counties where out-migration has hollowed communities to the bone.

English learners quadrupled in a decade. LEP enrollment surged from 1.9% to 7.1% of students between 2015 and 2025, driven largely by Hispanic immigration into north Alabama's poultry processing corridor. One in every 14 Alabama students is now classified as an English learner. Whether that growth has peaked — given federal immigration enforcement — is one of the open questions.

Mobile County has lost one in five students. The state's largest coastal district shed 12,726 students over the past decade, a 20.2% decline that outpaces the state average by a wide margin. Meanwhile, Huntsville City stands as essentially the only large district not in freefall.

What comes next

This is the first in a series of articles examining what the 2025-26 enrollment data reveals about Alabama public schools. New articles publish weekly on Tuesdays.

The enrollment figures come from the ALSDE Reports & Data. The data covers headcount enrollment for public school districts statewide.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.