Eagle County School District enrollment looks down again this year
Official enrollment count is taken Oct. 1, but district's early tallies show 220 fewer students than 2024-25 school year
Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily
Eagle County School District enrollment looks primed to hit a new low this school year.
During the 2024-25 school year, district enrollment was the lowest it had been in a decade, with 6,312 students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade.
While the district takes its official count to determine state funding on Oct. 1, the district’s early projections, taken on Sept. 3 at 16 of the district’s 18 schools, show a further decline of 220 students for the 2025-26 school year.
Statewide, enrollment has also been trending down. During the 2024-25 school year, public school enrollment in Colorado hit its lowest number in a decade: 881,085 students.
This year’s count has yet to come in, but if past trends are an indicator, the number may be even lower. In 2021, 2022 and 2023, the state lost 1,800 or more students per year. However, last year, the number of students in Colorado public schools decreased by close to 400 from the previous year, indicating a slowing in the decline.
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The number of students enrolled plays an important role in how public schools in Colorado are funded. The school finance formula provides funding per-pupil, in addition to other factors.
The school finance formula contains one benefit, particularly for rural schools: four-year enrollment averaging. This softens the blow of large student population declines by allowing districts to average their enrollment over the three years leading up to the current school year in addition to this year’s numbers.
As a result, even with the projected decline, the district expects its funded pupil count to go down by 36, rather than 220. This results in a difference of $375,000 from the district’s anticipated funding this year.
“That’s not nothing, but right now it’s a half of a percent of our overall school finance funding, so not the end of the world at this point,” said Bryson Beaver, the district’s chief financial officer, at the Sept. 10 school board meeting.
The district may make staffing changes at schools that see a difference of 20 or more students from projected totals. Only one of the 16 schools evaluated saw a difference of more than 20 students: Red Canyon High School. The alternative school will likely keep all its staff, as its student population typically grows throughout the year.
“Red Canyon’s numbers frequently fluctuate a lot throughout the year as they pick up some students from Battle Mountain and Eagle Valley, so it’s very unlikely that we’ll make any staffing changes based on that,” Beaver said.
In October, the district will file its final student enrollment numbers with the Colorado Department of Education to determine the exact amount of funding it will receive from the state.
