In this series: Louisiana 2025-26 Enrollment.

Fifty-eight of Louisiana's 79 traditional parish and city school systems — 73.4% — recorded their lowest enrollment in the 2019-2026 data window. Seven of the 10 largest traditional districts were on the list.

The comparison is a windowed record, not a claim about enrollment before 2019. It shows how broadly the latest decline reached across the systems included in the state's published district rows.

Nearly every large parish

Jefferson Parish^↗ET, the state's largest traditional district at 45,406 students, is 10.2% below its 2019 peak. East Baton Rouge Parish^↗ET (38,008) is down 8.7%. St. Tammany Parish^↗ET (35,375) is down 8.8%. Caddo Parish^↗ET (32,257) is down 14.8%, and Lafayette Parish^↗ET (28,839) is down 9.5%.

Fourteen traditional systems enrolled more than 14,000 students in 2026; 11 of them were at a windowed low. Ascension, Calcasieu and Livingston were the three above the threshold that avoided the list.

The 58 systems at record lows collectively enrolled 516,770 students, 82.9% of the traditional public-school enrollment in the current data. The 21 systems that avoided the list included 17 with fewer than 5,000 students.

The steepest percentage declines are smaller systems

West Carroll Parish^↗ET lost 29.4% of its enrollment since 2019, dropping from 1,976 to 1,396 students. Catahoula Parish fell 28.0%; the City of Bogalusa school system fell 27.6%; East Carroll Parish fell 26.3%; Pointe Coupee fell 25.0%; and Union fell 24.7%.

Twenty-one systems at windowed lows declined in every year from 2019 through 2026 — a seven-year unbroken decline streak. Seven additional record-low systems had five- or six-year decline streaks. The data show the pattern, but do not identify why it occurred.

Who escaped, and barely

The 21 systems not at windowed lows offer little separation from the floor. Ascension Parish^↗ET was 13 students above its lowest recorded enrollment. Grant Parish was 15 above, and West Feliciana Parish was five above. Lincoln Parish was the fourth-largest system outside the low list, with 5,863 students.

Only three traditional systems enrolling more than 10,000 students avoided the list. Calcasieu Parish^↗ET enrolled 28,654 students and remained 10.1% below its 2019 level. Livingston Parish^↗ET enrolled 26,380, or 336 above its 2020 trough. Ascension enrolled 23,422, just 13 students above its low.

The remaining escapees include small systems and specialty entities. Ecole Pointe-au-Chien has four years in this data window, rising from nine students in its first observed year to 54 in 2026; its record is therefore not comparable to systems with observations across the full window.

A sharp latest-year shift

The share of systems at their running low fell to 55.7% in 2025 before rising to 73.4% in 2026. Statewide traditional enrollment fell by 2,961 students in 2025 and by 16,065 in 2026.

The enrollment extract establishes the timing and distribution of the decline. It does not establish whether population change, school choice, local economic conditions or another factor caused the 2026 shift. Those are competing explanations requiring separate evidence.

What the data can and cannot say

The 2019-2026 window is long enough to show that 58 systems reached their lowest observed enrollment in the latest year, including seven of the 10 largest. It is not long enough to call these all-time lows without qualification, and the package cannot forecast whether the pattern will continue.

The LAEdTribune contacted Dr. James Gray and Kaela Lewis of Jefferson Parish, LaMont Cole and Taylor Gast of East Baton Rouge Parish, and Keith Burton of Caddo Parish for comment and did not receive a response before publication.

For the 516,770 students enrolled in the 58 systems at windowed lows, the 2025-26 school year marked the bottom of the available comparison window.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.