All districts — As a statewide trend of enrollment decline impacts local districts, school leaders say balancing next school year’s budget hinges on student numbers.
Grand Rapids Public Schools is “continuing to face financial struggles,” due in large part to declining enrollment, said Rhonda Kribs, the district’s chief financial officer.
“We’re continuing to lose students,” she said, noting that the district is bracing for a 200-student drop in the upcoming school year from its 2025-26 enrollment of 13,437. “It’s not just in one building. It’s spread out across the whole district.”
The district’s $281 million budget for school year 2026-27 marks a $7 million decrease from last year; this follows a $16 million reduction prior to the start of the 2025-26 school year. Even with less spending, GRPS is still facing a $13.1 million deficit.
Statewide since the 2015-16 school year, student numbers have dropped about 120,000 — from 154,005 to 142,000 — or nearly 8%, according to Mi School Data.
In Kent County, numbers have declined at about the same percentage during that time, with a drop of 8,452 students, leaving the county with a current total enrollment of about 99,000. Also during that timeframe, 17 of 20 Kent ISD districts have lost students, with percentages ranging from 1% to more than 20% of their student populations.
“Our urban districts and our first-ring suburban districts are the ones that are losing students the fastest, and that is comparable to most districts in the urban core across the state and across the nation,” said Kent ISD Superintendent Ron Gorman.
Many Factors at Play
Fewer students means less funding because Michigan schools receive a per-pupil foundation allowance, which was set at $10,050 for 2025-26 and is expected to increase by 2.5% for next school year, said Kevin Philipps, Kent ISD assistant superintendent of administrative services.
However when enrollment drops, cutting services isn’t a one-to-one equation, Phillipps explained. Right-sizing only works after districts drop a certain number of students — enough to justify big decisions like eliminating a classroom or closing a school.
“Sometimes that leaves you in a position that you can’t right-size to the same dollar value that you lost in your revenue,” he said.
‘The combination of losing federal money, higher than average increases in (staff) compensation and now a slowing school aid environment is going to start putting a lot of pressure on districts in the next few years.’
— Kent ISD Associate Superintendent Kevin Philipps
In GRPS, Communications Director Luke Stier said the scarcity of affordable family housing in the city of Grand Rapids is a major contributing factor in the enrollment discussion. Compounding the issue are historically low U.S. birth rates and students lost to Schools of Choice programs and homeschooling.
“It’s all those factors combined,” Stier said. “Certainly, Schools of Choice, that impacts the number of students that come here as well, but combine that with declining birth rates and the fact that folks have to move out of the city for affordability reasons as they continue to grow their family.”’
Gorman described the confluence of factors he sees at play in district budgeting.
“I think part of the superintendent’s job now is to educate their board on low birth rates, rising inflation costs and things of that nature,” he said. “Fuel isn’t going down in price; food service isn’t, textbooks, utilities aren’t. You have less students so you are bringing in less revenue, but your utilities and all those other costs to educate students are still going up.”
A Bigger Decline than Expected
In Wyoming Public Schools, a steeper-than-expected drop in enrollment for the 2025-26 school year led to a budget hole that required tightening expenditures and staff reductions.
Last fall, enrollment was down to 3,686 students, a loss of 146 students from 2024-25 and 91 more than the district had projected to lose. With the state per-pupil funding at $10,050, that was a loss of $914,550 more than anticipated, said Associate Superintendent Jamie Carnes.
The district addressed that loss by “squeezing a lot of budget line items” in the areas of technology, discretionary spending and bus purchases, but they had to take further action in preparing for 2026-27, he said.
“As far as next year’s concerned … we were looking at a deficit closer to $2.5 million. That led us to have to make some very difficult decisions because our goal was to balance that budget.”
Through retirement, resignations and layoffs, WPS cut more than 20 positions, including three in non-union and administrative areas, three in maintenance and custodial areas, and 14.6 in teaching. Eleven teaching staff members and two administrators were laid off, primarily at the elementary level.
While the district’s enrollment has been on a downward trend in recent years, decreasing by about 18% since 2015-16, Carnes said a notable factor in this year’s decline was due to Hispanic families being affected by federal immigration issues. WPS’s student population is 50.5% Hispanic.
As far as next year’s enrollment, Wyoming is projecting fall numbers to be at 3,589 — down another 57 students from last fall, but not as steep as what they experienced this school year.
“We are hoping that the fall 2025 drop is a one-time issue,” Carnes said.
Other Budget Factors
It wasn’t long ago that districts were working to spend unexpected revenues — and quickly.
In the years following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a total of $264.15 million in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund dollars were distributed across Kent County districts as part of the 2021 Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act. Districts had tight deadlines to spend this money, which was distributed in three allotments, with the final deadline for the third and largest allotment on Sept. 30, 2024.
Along with infrastructure and technology, many districts invested in staff — nurses, paraprofessionals, counselors and other mental health professionals who were in increased demand during the pandemic.
“ESSER forced districts to add a lot of services,” Philipps said. “You couldn’t just put that money in the bank; you had to spend it on something, and there’s only so many HVAC systems and computers you can buy.
“Now we are on the back end of all those ESSER dollars and districts are starting to scale back some of those services they added.”
At the time, the influx of ESSER dollars plus larger-than-typical state foundation allowance increases buoyed coffers, Philipps explained. But now, with those funds spent and more modest increases expected in state per-pupil funding, districts are facing a different reality.
“The combination of losing federal money, higher than average increases in (staff) compensation, and now a slowing school aid environment is going to start putting a lot of pressure on districts in the next few years,” he said.
Districts that can’t cover budget holes with fund reserves first look to make reductions in non-personnel areas — tightening teaching supplies, building maintenance and bus routes, for example. That, however, only works for so long, he said.
“A school district is going to be 85% personnel and 15% non-personnel, so you are only going to get so much juice from the squeeze, so to speak,” Philipps said. “The next step is staffing reductions through attrition, then support staff … Then you have to, unfortunately, migrate toward instructional staff.”
Tighter Budgets Moving Forward
In Sparta Area Schools, the situation isn’t dire — at least not yet.
“I know that there are some of our neighbors who are making some significant layoffs and reductions,” said Superintendent Joel Stoner. “Sparta isn’t seeing the same pinch point yet.”
Still, Stoner said, the district is entering the 2026-27 school year with a roughly $1 million deficit.
Like many districts, Sparta used its ESSER funds to “invest in people,” he said; now, with those dollars spent and per-pupil funding increases not keeping pace with inflation, it’s become a strain to continue funding some of those positions and services.
“We added mental health supports with our COVID monies, we added staffing to reduce class sizes — those things were necessary post-COVID, and they’re still necessary, but the resources aren’t coming in to support those things,” Stoner said.
Sparta has a robust enough fund balance to cover the shortfall without making reductions to staff and programs for now, he said. But the district does have some difficult decisions to make in the future.
“We’re beginning to have to strategize and struggle with right-sizing our staff,” Stoner said. “It’s going to be a shrinking of the workforce — that’s our only way out of any sort of struggle to balance the budget. Less money means less people; that’s just how schools work.
“We want to do as much of that as we can through attrition; we try to avoid layoffs because of how it impacts morale.”
SNN reporter Riley Kelley contributed to this story.
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