Eagle County School District sees biggest enrollment dip in a decade
With funding tied to student numbers, district prepares to do more with less

Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily archive
Public schools in Colorado are surveyed annually for their student enrollment. In addition to capturing student demographics, including race and gender, the enrollment numbers impact the amount of funding school districts receive from the state.
This year, the Eagle County School District’s enrollment numbers are the lowest they have been in a decade.
Declining in Eagle County and statewide
The Colorado Department of Education released the 2024-2025 school year enrollment count numbers on Jan. 15.
According to the enrollment numbers, this year, there are 6,312 students enrolled in the Eagle County School District from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade. This reflects a decline of 185 students from last year, the biggest decrease documented in at least 10 years. (This year’s released enrollment data goes back to fall 2014.)
Enrollment has declined every year for the past six years in Eagle County. Over the last five years, the district has lost 500 students.

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Statewide, the trends are similar. This year, public school enrollment in Colorado hit its lowest number in a decade: 881,085 students.
In 2021, 2022 and 2023, the state lost 1,800 or more students per year. This year, the number of students in Colorado public schools decreased by almost 400 from last year, indicating a slowing in the decline.
This year’s enrollment numbers do not come as a surprise to the district. Eagle County’s declining enrollment is due to several years of declining local birth rates, along with declining population rates due to the high cost of living, according to Eagle County School District Superintendent Phil Qualman.
“Superintendent Qualman is hopeful that enrollment numbers will rebound as ongoing affordable housing initiatives take shape,” wrote Matt Miano, the district’s chief communications officer, in an email to the Vail Daily.
Demographically, Eagle County’s schools skew Latino and white. According to this year’s enrollment numbers, more than 3,400 Eagle County students identify as Latino, while close to 2,700 identify as white. Many Eagle County schools offer deliberately bilingual instruction.
Every year, students are missed in enrollment numbers
The enrollment count is taken in October each year. In Eagle County, around 100 students who arrive around December, often with families pursuing seasonal work, are missed in this count each year.
Because school funding is based partially on enrollment counts, this means the district educates around 100 students each year it does not receive funding to support.
“That does affect student ratios in some classrooms and our teachers and staff do the best they can with what they have to work with,” Miano wrote.
How low enrollment impacts Colorado public schools’ funding
Public school districts in Colorado are funded by the state through a combination of three factors: The number of pupils (multiplied by a base rate connected to the size of the district, personnel costs and the cost of living), the district’s at-risk factor and the district’s capacity to serve out-of-district students online.
When the district’s enrollment counts come in lower than anticipated, it can lead to midyear budget cuts to meet the reduced amount of funding the district receives from the state. The district “is regularly forced to make do with the funding provided,” Miano wrote.
Currently, funding is calculated based on a five-year average enrollment number, providing a cushion for smaller, rural school districts like Eagle County that tend to see more fluctuations in enrollment and have less funding to begin with.
Even with enrollment averaging, the district may still need to make difficult financial decisions as student numbers continue to decline, including potentially eliminating staff positions.
Gov. Jared Polis has proposed a plan to recalculate the school funding formula, to be rolled out over the next six years, which would eliminate enrollment averaging. In November, Polis said he would extend the time frame for introducing the new funding formula to seven years.
Qualman is “cautiously optimistic” about the possibility of the funding formula coming into play over six years, Miano wrote.
At the same time, Qualman remains concerned about the plan to do away with enrollment averaging. “That recommendation would be detrimental to recruiting and retaining quality educators because it would reduce job security,” Miano wrote.