In this series: Kansas 2025-26 Enrollment.

In most states, the pandemic was a dip. Kansas schools lost 16,114 students between 2019-20 and 2020-21, a 3.4% drop that aligned with the national pattern of families pulling children from public education during COVID-19. What followed was supposed to be a recovery. Two years of modest gains in 2021-22 and 2022-23 added back 5,243 students, enough to suggest the bottom had been found.

It had not. Since 2023, Kansas has lost another 12,539 students across three consecutive years of decline. The state now sits at 447,803 students, 23,410 below its 2020 peak, 5.0% smaller than it was before a single mask was worn in a Kansas classroom. The pandemic did not cause a temporary disruption. It accelerated a demographic shift that was already slowing growth before 2020, and the resulting decline shows no sign of leveling off.

62% of districts are worse off than during COVID

The most striking finding in the data is not how few districts have recovered. It is how many have fallen further. Of the 273 Kansas districts that reported enrollment in both the last pre-COVID year and 2025-26, just 70, or 25.6%, have returned to their 2019-20 levels.

But the recovery rate understates the problem. A full 169 districts, 61.9% of the total, now enroll fewer students than they did at the worst point of the pandemic in 2020-21. These districts did not merely fail to bounce back. They have been losing students at a rate that makes the COVID year look like a plateau, not a trough.

The gap between where Kansas enrollment would be on its pre-COVID trajectory and where it actually is has widened to 35,917 students. That number represents a combination of students who never returned to public school and students who were never born. Kansas's birth rate hit 11.6 per 1,000 in 2023, the lowest since the state began keeping records in 1912.

The brief recovery that wasn't

The year-over-year pattern makes the false recovery visible. Kansas added 2,871 students in 2021-22 and 2,372 in 2022-23. Those two years were the only gains in the post-COVID period. What followed erased them and then some: losses of 5,203 in 2023-24, 2,923 in 2024-25, and 4,413 in 2025-26.

The net result: Kansas recovered 5,243 students in two years and then lost 12,539 in the next three. For every student the system clawed back, it lost 2.4 more. The state's COVID recovery rate is negative 45.3%, meaning it has added nearly half again as much loss as the pandemic itself inflicted.

Mark Tallman at the Kansas Association of School Boards identified two forces behind the decline that are not going away:

"The decline is primarily due to falling birth rates and to more Kansans leaving the state than moving in, indicating further loss of enrollment is likely." -- Kansas Association of School Boards

Kansas experienced net out-migration of 26,000 people during the 2010s, and the under-five population has dropped by 30,000, or 15%, since 2014-15. Those smaller birth cohorts are now entering kindergarten, and the pipeline shrinkage has only begun to register in overall enrollment totals.

Five districts account for 38% of all losses

The geographic concentration of loss is severe. WichitaET, the state's largest district, has shed 4,400 students since 2020, a 9.0% decline that pushed it to its all-time low of 44,636. Kansas CityET lost 2,397 students (-10.2%), OlatheET lost 2,260 (-7.6%), LawrenceET lost 1,769 (-15.0%), and Shawnee MissionET lost 1,301 (-4.7%). Together, those five districts account for 12,127 of the 32,380 total students lost statewide, 37.5% of the deficit concentrated in five of 273 systems.

Wichita's situation has moved from fiscal pressure to operational crisis. The district was built for 63,000 students and now serves 44,636, running at roughly 71% capacity across a campus portfolio that averages over 60 years old. A $42 million budget gap forced the closure of multiple schools, and district leadership has signaled that more consolidation is coming.

"We have to be honest: If enrollment continues to decline... we're going to have to look at the number of schools we have to operate efficiently." -- Fabian Armendariz, Wichita Public Schools Director of Operations, KCUR, Oct. 2025

Lawrence's 15.0% loss is the steepest among the top 10 largest decliners in absolute terms. Leavenworth (-18.2%), Newton (-17.5%), and Emporia (-13.2%) have experienced even sharper percentage declines, suggesting the erosion extends well beyond the Kansas City and Wichita metro areas.

Where students are going instead

Birth rates explain the incoming pipeline, but they do not explain students who were enrolled in 2020 and are no longer in the system. Several competing forces are pulling students out of Kansas public schools.

Homeschooling in Kansas grew 57% between 2017-18 and 2023-24, and the trend has not reversed. Johnson County suburbs saw the fastest growth: Shawnee Mission's homeschool notifications increased 162% and Blue Valley's increased 161% during that period. Accredited private school enrollment rebounded to 26,406 students statewide, further drawing from the public system.

Kansas's open enrollment law, which allows students to attend any district in the state, has also reshuffled the deck. In its first year, about 1,500 students switched districts. Wichita gained 1,557 students through open enrollment but lost approximately 2,400, a net loss of about 840 students to inter-district transfers alone.

Virtual school enrollment statewide grew from 5,658 in 2019-20 to 9,857 in 2023-24. Elk Valley, a district that enrolled 24 students in 2024, reported 2,160 in 2026, almost certainly reflecting a virtual school operation rather than an organic enrollment surge.

No single alternative accounts for the full 23,410-student deficit. The most likely explanation is that multiple exit ramps opened simultaneously: lower birth rates shrank the entering class, pandemic-era homeschooling became permanent for some families, private school enrollment recovered, and open enrollment allowed families in declining districts to leave without leaving the public system entirely.

The suburban exception is narrowing

Among the state's largest districts, only AndoverET (+1,658 students, +18.0%) and Spring HillET (+1,582, +36.7%) have posted substantial growth since 2020. Both are outer-ring suburbs of Wichita and Kansas City, respectively, benefiting from new subdivision development.

But even the suburban growth engine is running out of fuel. Maize, which grew steadily for most of the past two decades, gained exactly two students between 2020 and 2026. Topeka Public SchoolsET lost 607 students (-4.7%). The number of districts gaining students has shrunk from 169 in 2021-22 to 92 in 2025-26, while the number declining has climbed from 101 to 181.

The distribution of damage

The recovery rate histogram tells the most complete story. Of 273 districts, 96 have a recovery rate below negative 100%, meaning they have lost more additional students since the COVID trough than they lost during the pandemic itself. Another 31 districts are between negative 100% and negative 50%, and 24 more sit between negative 50% and zero. Only 26 districts have recovered some of their pandemic losses without fully closing the gap, and 92 have recovered all of it or more.

The 86 districts at their all-time low in 2025-26, versus just 11 at an all-time high, captures the asymmetry. Kansas's enrollment problem is not a pandemic hangover. The pandemic accelerated a demographic transformation that was already underway and that the state's school finance system, which allocates $5,378 per full-time student in base funding, was not designed to manage in reverse.

What 440,000 looks like

If the 2026 decline of 4,413 students represents the new baseline rather than a one-year anomaly, Kansas will fall below 440,000 students by 2028. The 2026-27 kindergarten class will be drawn from the cohort born during the state's lowest birth year on record. The Kansas legislature has so far declined to pass a voucher program, but SB 75, proposing up to $8,000 per child in refundable tax credits for private school tuition, remains active.

Wichita is already closing schools. Lawrence has lost 15% of its students since 2020. Emporia is down 13.2%. The pandemic was supposed to be the shock. Five years later, it looks more like the starting gun.

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