Last fall, Washington's public schools grew for the first time since the pandemic, adding about 6,000 students. This fall they gave all of it back and more. OSPI's 2025-26 enrollment file counts 1,100,053 students in the state's public schools, 8,041 fewer than a year earlier and 38,974 fewer than in 2018-19. Enrollment is now 3.4% below the pre-pandemic level and 4.2% below the 2019-20 peak.
OSPI Washington State Report Card via data.wa.gov (enrollment files 2018-19 through 2025-26). Sums school-level All-Grades headcounts; excludes private schools.
The decline is broad. Of the 91 districts with at least 3,000 students, 63 lost enrollment and the median district shrank 0.8%. Of the ten largest districts, nine lost students; only Spokane and Puyallup held steady.
Where the loss landed
| Evergreen SD (Clark County) | -823 | |
| Vancouver SD | -642 | |
| Kennewick SD | -496 | |
| Issaquah SD | -477 | |
| Bethel SD | -470 | |
| Lake Washington SD | -469 | |
| Yakima SD | -417 | |
| Tacoma SD | -404 | |
| Mukilteo SD | -310 | |
| Tumwater SD | -273 | |
| Seattle SD | -258 | |
| Edmonds SD | -237 |
OSPI enrollment files, school-level All-Grades headcounts summed to district.
Clark County's two big districts lead the list for the second year running. Evergreen is now 17% below its 2018-19 enrollment, the steepest decline of any large district in the state, and Vancouver is 10% below. Issaquah, which has lost 11% since 2018-19, lost another 477 students. The surprise is Bethel, in Pierce County, which had been the state's fastest-growing large district through 2024-25 and shed 470 students this year. Seattle's loss of 258 is its smallest in years, and the district remains 7.9% below 2018-19.
The gainers
| Clover Park SD (Lakewood) | +344 | |
| Bellevue SD | +210 | |
| Highline SD | +191 | |
| Everett SD | +186 | |
| Quillayute Valley SD (Forks) | +170 | |
| Moses Lake SD | +146 | |
| Snohomish SD | +137 | |
| Goldendale SD | +136 | |
| Puyallup SD | +118 | |
| University Place SD | +83 |
OSPI enrollment files. Quillayute Valley and Goldendale are the home districts of two statewide online schools, Insight School of Washington (3,078 students) and Washington Connections Academy (2,320); nearly all of their growth is online enrollment.
Clover Park's 344-student gain reverses a six-year slide; the district is still 6% smaller than in 2018-19. Bellevue, Highline, and Everett each grew about 1% after years of losses. Two of the ten gainers are not what they appear: Quillayute Valley, the Forks district, hosts Insight School of Washington, and Goldendale hosts Washington Connections Academy. Both online schools grew by about 200 students, and that is where the districts' growth came from.
Online schools were the one growing category. Brick-and-mortar schools lost about 9,400 students; online and parent-partnership programs gained 1,389. The largest single increase was at Washington Digital Academy, a statewide online school run by the South Bend district, which grew from 466 to 1,055 students. The same district opened a second online program, Washington Online School, with 280.
By region
| South Central ESD 105 (Yakima Valley) | -1.9% | |
| ESD 123 (Tri-Cities / SE WA) | -1.7% | |
| ESD 112 (Vancouver / SW WA) | -1.6% | |
| North Central ESD 171 (Wenatchee) | -1.0% | |
| Capital Region ESD 113 (Olympia) | -0.8% | |
| ESD 101 (Spokane / NE WA) | -0.7% | |
| Puget Sound ESD 121 (Seattle / Tacoma) | -0.5% | |
| Northwest ESD 189 (Bellingham / Everett) | -0.4% | |
| Olympic ESD 114 (Kitsap / Olympic Pen.) | +0.0% |
OSPI enrollment files, school-level headcounts summed by ESD.
The regional pattern flipped. From 2018-19 to 2024-25, western Washington lost students and eastern Washington held steady. This year the Yakima Valley and the Tri-Cities led the decline, each down close to 2%, while the Seattle-Tacoma metro lost just half a percent and the Olympic Peninsula was flat. Kennewick (−496), Yakima (−417), Sunnyside (−229), and Wapato (−133) are all on the list of the state's biggest losers for the first time.
Sixteen schools closed
The largest was Marysville Middle School, 658 students, closed by a district under state financial oversight that also reorganized every elementary school into a K-6 (see Marysville by the numbers). Several others on the list are reconfigurations rather than closures: Burlington-Edison turned Lucille Umbarger Elementary (620) into a middle school and West View Elementary (355) into an early-learning center; Shelton's Choice Middle and High School (248) reopened under a new code as CHOICE School. The remaining closures are mostly small programs: Pierce County Skills Center (364, Bethel), Bates Technical High School (343, Tacoma), Thompson Preschool (228, Bethel), Millwood Kindergarten Center (179, West Valley SD in Spokane), Broadway Learning Center (137, Longview), Desert Oasis High School (130, Othello), Summit Public School: Olympus (112, a Tacoma charter), and Hopkins Elementary (104, Aberdeen).
Twenty-two schools opened. The largest by far is Sageview High School in Pasco, which started with 1,218 students, the first new comprehensive high school in the Tri-Cities in over a decade. Pasco also opened Orion High School, an option program with 153. Charter schools, which grew 60% between 2018-19 and 2024-25, were flat this year at 4,832 students across the state's two authorizers.