Colorado Schools Face New Reality as Student Enrollment Keeps Falling
By Nicole C. Brambila | The Denver Gazette
Colorado public schools went from adding roughly 3,500 students a year before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 to losing nearly 4,000 students a year afterward.
As more than 870,000 Colorado students return to the classroom for another school year, they are part of a shrinking population since enrollment peaked in 2019. Colorado has 40,000 fewer students today than it did at its apex.
The Denver Gazette compared districts’ average annual enrollment gains or losses in the five years before and after the pandemic to identify where enrollment trends changed the most.
The forces that long fueled Colorado’s enrollment boom — births and migration — have lost momentum.
Nationally, enrollment peaked in 2019 with 50.7 millio...
