West Baton Rouge Parish - EdTribune LA - Louisiana Education Data

Only 7 of 74 Louisiana Parishes Have Recovered From COVID

Wed, 20 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In this series: Louisiana 2025-26 Enrollment.

Livingston Parish gained 232 students between 2019 and 2026. That makes it the most successful COVID recovery story in Louisiana. The second-best, West Baton Rouge Parish, added 168. The two parishes sit side by side on the east bank of the Mississippi, and together they account for nearly 70% of all the net enrollment growth across every traditional parish in the state.

The other 67 parishes never came back.

Of the 74 traditional parishes with complete enrollment data for both 2019 and 2026, just seven have returned to or exceeded their pre-COVID levels, a recovery rate of 9.5%. The 67 non-recovered parishes are collectively short 65,754 students below their 2019 levels, and for most, the gap is widening: 55 parishes hit their lowest enrollment on record in 2026.

Seven years of unbroken decline

Traditional parish enrollment in Louisiana fell from 643,986 in 2019 to 578,632 in 2026, a loss of 65,354 students, or 10.1%. The decline has never paused. Every year since 2019 has been lower than the one before, with losses ranging from 2,775 (in 2025) to 19,459 (in the first pandemic year of 2020).

The 2026 drop of 15,424 students is the second-largest in this window, smaller only than the initial pandemic shock, and nearly six times the previous year's loss. After what looked like a slowing of the bleeding in 2025, Louisiana's traditional enrollment fell off a cliff.

The recovered seven

The seven parishes that have returned to 2019 levels share little in common besides geography. Ascension Parish, the second-largest of the group at 23,422 students, sits just 13 students above its 2019 level. A bad month could erase its recovery entirely. Three of the seven are specialty institutions with fewer than 1,000 students: the Special School District (+103), Southern University Lab School (+38), and the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (flat at 234).

Only Livingston (+232, or 0.9%) and West Baton Rouge (+168, or 4.2%) recorded gains large enough to represent genuine growth rather than statistical noise.

Recovery rates vary sharply by parish size. None of the 25 mid-size parishes (5,000 to 20,000 students) have recovered, a 0% rate. Two of 10 large parishes (20,000+) recovered. The highest recovery rate, 42.9%, belongs to the smallest tier, parishes under 1,000 students, but three of seven recovering in that group is an artifact of tiny denominators and specialty institutions.

Where the losses are deepest

Six parishes have each lost more than 3,000 students since 2019. Caddo Parish, which includes Shreveport, leads with a deficit of 5,611, a 14.8% decline. Jefferson Parish, the state's largest traditional district, lost 5,160 students (10.2%). East Baton Rouge Parish, St. Tammany Parish, Calcasieu Parish, and Lafayette Parish each lost between 3,000 and 3,700.

Together, these six parishes account for 24,049 of the 65,754-student statewide deficit, or 36.6%. But the losses are not concentrated at the top. Forty-two parishes have lost more than 10% of their 2019 enrollment. Thirty have lost more than 15%. Twelve have lost more than 20%.

The percentage losses are steepest in smaller southern parishes. Iberia Parish is down 16.4% (2,046 students). Terrebonne Parish has lost 15.9% (2,737). St. Mary Parish is down 18.5%, the worst rate among parishes with at least 5,000 students in 2019.

Decline without a floor

For most parishes, 2026 did not just fail to bring recovery. It brought new lows. Fifty-five of the 74 parishes recorded their lowest enrollment of the 2019-2026 period in the most recent year. That means for 74.3% of traditional parishes, enrollment is not stabilizing, it is still falling.

Of the 75 parishes reporting in 2026, 67 lost students compared to the prior year. Sixty-five saw their decline accelerate, losing more students in the 2025-to-2026 transition than in the 2024-to-2025 transition.

Even the recovered parishes are losing altitude. Ascension peaked at 24,138 in 2023 and has shed 716 students since. Livingston peaked at 27,105 in 2023 and dropped 725. Both are still technically above their 2019 baselines, but the margin is shrinking.

No parish came within 2% of recovery without clearing it, meaning the gap between recovered and not is binary, not gradual. The nearest miss is Rapides Parish at -8.8%, which is not close at all.

Fewer births, fewer families, new exits

The most likely driver of Louisiana's enrollment collapse is demographic: the state is producing fewer school-age children. Louisiana recorded just over 52,000 births in 2024, down from more than 63,000 in 2013, a 17% decline in 11 years. The primary cause is not lower fertility rates but outmigration of women in their prime child-bearing years.

"The reason for the decline in birth is because of a decline in the female population of child-bearing age." Allison Plyer, chief demographer, The Data Center, New Orleans

Plyer has warned the effect will ripple: "It will have impact on schools; it will have impacts on hospitals and will have impacts on all kinds of institutions and facilities and businesses across the state."

School choice programs represent a second, newer channel. Louisiana's LA GATOR Education Savings Account program, which launched in the 2025-26 school year, received 39,189 applications and deemed nearly 35,000 students eligible. Governor Jeff Landry's budget request of $93 million would fund roughly 12,000 participants. The program replaced the older Louisiana Scholarship Program, which served about 5,000 students, so the net new exits from public schools may be smaller than the headline application figure suggests, though the full enrollment impact will not be visible until 2027 data.

Operational fallout

The per-pupil funding formula amplifies the pain of declining enrollment. Louisiana's Minimum Foundation Program has used a base amount of $4,015 per student since 2019, with no increase until a proposed $47 bump now before the legislature, which would be the first since 2008.

"School leaders have been sounding the alarm for years about inflation and the impact of declining enrollment on fixed costs, since schools are funded on a per-pupil basis." Source: WWNO, March 2026

The Louisiana Department of Education expects enrollment to fall by another 12,000 to 13,000 students in the next fiscal year, which would translate to roughly $42 million less in state spending.

Parishes are responding with closures. Caddo Parish closed three elementary schools in 2025-26 after losing roughly 1,000 students per year for more than a decade. School Board President Jasmine Green acknowledged the system had dropped from 42,000 to 33,000 students and said, "we have to make the adjustments with the changing student population." Jefferson Parish consolidated six schools and built two new campuses in 2023, with more consolidations expected. East Baton Rouge approved a realignment plan in 2025 that closed five schools and consolidated several more, affecting over 10,000 students, after anticipating a $5.6 million funding drop from lower enrollment.

In New Orleans, where the all-charter system faces similar demographic headwinds, district data chief Max Daigh put it bluntly: "The district can't enroll kids who don't exist."

The blueprint that does not exist

The seven recovered parishes offer no model for the rest. They are either suburban Baton Rouge bedroom communities (Livingston, Ascension, West Baton Rouge) that benefit from spillover growth, or specialty institutions insulated from parish-level demographic forces. Neither model scales.

And even those success stories are fragile. Ascension sits 13 students above its 2019 level. A single bad enrollment count would remove it from the recovered list. Livingston peaked in 2023 and has shed 725 students since.

The 67 parishes still below 2019 levels need to budget, staff, and maintain buildings for a student body that has not stopped shrinking since before the pandemic. The Department of Education expects another 12,000 to 13,000 students to disappear next year. That would push traditional parish enrollment below 570,000 -- less than 89% of its 2019 level -- and extend the unbroken decline to eight consecutive years.

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

Baton Rouge Loses 1,703 Students in One Year

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In this series: Louisiana 2025-26 Enrollment.

For four years, East Baton Rouge Parish lost students the way a faucet drips. Between 2022 and 2025, the state capital's school system shed 217, 511, and 221 students in consecutive years. The declines registered as rounding errors for a district enrolling nearly 40,000.

Then the faucet broke. In 2026, EBR lost 1,703 students, a 4.3% single-year decline that exceeded even the first year of COVID (-1,060 in 2020). The district dropped from 39,711 to 38,008, pushing its eight-year enrollment loss to 3,629 students, or 8.7% below its 2019 level of 41,637.

A year that broke the pattern

The 2026 number is not just bad. It is categorically different from what came before. In 2025, EBR's year-over-year decline was -0.6%, roughly in line with the statewide rate of -0.4%. In 2026, EBR's rate jumped to -4.3%, more than double the statewide rate of -2.0%.

EBR accounted for 12.7% of Louisiana's total enrollment loss in 2026, despite enrolling just 5.8% of the state's students. That disproportion makes it one of the largest single contributors to the statewide decline of 13,452 students.

The sheer size of the 2026 drop also means nearly half of EBR's total eight-year loss (47%) occurred in a single year. What looked like a slow, manageable decline now looks more like a delayed collapse.

What converged in 2026

No single factor explains a loss this large. At least three forces hit simultaneously.

The most visible was the district's own realignment plan. In April 2025, the EBR School Board unanimously approved Superintendent LaMont Cole's proposal to close and consolidate nine schools, affecting more than 10,000 students and approximately 1,000 staff members. The closures included Bernard Terrace Elementary, Capitol Middle, Westminster Elementary, and two IDEA Public Schools charter campuses that had enrolled roughly 1,900 students before ceasing operations.

"This realignment plan puts students in better facilities, and it also allows us to be able to maximize on our resources and not be wasteful." School Board President Shashonnie Steward, WAFB, April 2025

School closures do not automatically translate into enrollment loss. Students can be redirected to remaining schools within the district. But closures create transition points where families reconsider their options, and in a market with expanding alternatives, some of those families leave.

Louisiana's new LA GATOR Education Savings Account program, signed into law by Governor Jeff Landry in 2024, launched for the 2025-26 school year. In its first application window, over 39,000 students applied statewide and nearly 35,000 were determined eligible, with awards of up to $7,626 per student (or $15,253 for students with qualifying disabilities). Governor Landry requested approximately $93 million for the program, enough to fund roughly 12,000 awards. How many of those recipients came from EBR specifically is not publicly reported at the district level, but in a parish that already operated one of the state's most expansive magnet systems, the introduction of portable funding for private alternatives likely drew some families out.

A third, slower-moving force is demographic. Louisiana recorded just over 52,000 births in 2024, a 17% drop from 2013. Between 2020 and 2024, roughly 129,500 more people left the state than moved in. The city of Baton Rouge itself has shrunk 3.6% since the 2020 census, to an estimated 218,223. Fewer families living in the parish means fewer students to enroll, regardless of school quality or policy.

The losses cut across every grade

EBR's 2026 decline was not concentrated in one grade band. Pre-K enrollment fell 16.1% since 2019, from 1,966 to 1,650. First grade dropped 13.1%. Ninth grade fell 18.0%, losing 521 students. Even grades that had been relatively stable, like third grade (down just 1.8%), could not offset the breadth of the decline.

The 9th-grade loss of 521 students stands out. It is the single largest grade-level decline in absolute and percentage terms, suggesting that the transition from middle school to high school is a key exit point. Families who tolerate a declining elementary school may not make the same choice for high school.

Shrinking share of a shrinking state

EBR's 2026 loss does not exist in isolation. Among Louisiana's 10 largest traditional parishes, every one except Calcasieu Parish lost students in 2026. Jefferson Parish lost 2,053 students (-4.3%), matching EBR's rate. Rapides Parish lost 882 (-4.0%). Lafayette Parish lost 867 (-2.9%).

But EBR's position within the Baton Rouge metro area is the more revealing comparison. Since 2019, Livingston Parish has grown 0.9%. Ascension Parish is essentially flat (+0.1%). West Baton Rouge Parish has grown 4.2%. EBR, the urban core, has lost 8.7%.

Even the smaller breakaway districts carved out of the original EBR system are declining. Central Community School District, which split from EBR in 2007, has lost 4.6% since 2019. Zachary Community School District is down 4.5%. City of Baker School District, the smallest of the group, has lost 26.9%.

The pattern is a familiar urban-suburban divergence, but with a twist: Baker's 26.9% collapse shows that not all suburban breakaway districts benefit from the separation. Baker enrolls fewer than 1,000 students and faces many of the same economic pressures as EBR.

The budget math

The fiscal consequences are already landing. EBR's Chief Financial Officer Kelly Lopez told the school board that declining enrollment would reduce funding by approximately $5.6 million. Total general fund revenue for 2025-26 is projected to fall $11.1 million below the prior year's revised budget.

"As we review the enrollment trends over the past decade, we're seeing a decline." CFO Kelly Lopez, WBRZ, May 2025

The district's proposed $804 million budget for 2025-26 is 2.5% below current spending levels. Superintendent Cole has said the nine school closures will eventually allow the district to defer $129 million in deferred maintenance costs by removing aging buildings from the portfolio. The question is whether the savings from consolidation can keep pace with the revenue losses from enrollment.

A demographic shift within the decline

EBR is not just getting smaller. Its composition is changing. Black students, who make up the vast majority of enrollment, declined from 71.8% of the total in 2019 to 68.4% in 2026, a loss of 3,923 students. White enrollment fell from 11.5% to 10.9%, losing 620 students. Hispanic enrollment grew from 11.5% to 15.0%, adding 883 students, though even that growth reversed in 2026, when Hispanic enrollment fell 384 students (-6.3%) after several years of steady gains.

Separately, EBR's English learner population grew from 3,509 (8.4%) to 3,649 (9.6%) over the same period. That growth closely tracks the Hispanic enrollment increase, though the categories overlap substantially and should not be compared directly.

The economically disadvantaged rate has hovered between 78% and 80% across most years, with a one-year spike to 92% in 2023 that almost certainly reflects an administrative shift rather than a real surge in family poverty. At these levels, the rate is inflated by Louisiana's participation in the Community Eligibility Provision, which allows entire districts to certify all students for meal programs. The number reflects program participation, not a precise poverty measure.

Nine buildings, one budget

Superintendent Cole's realignment plan was designed around a projected decline. CFO Kelly Lopez told the board to expect $5.6 million less in enrollment-based funding. The $804 million budget for 2025-26 cut 2.5% from the prior year. The nine school closures were supposed to buy breathing room by eliminating $129 million in deferred maintenance obligations.

But the 2026 drop of 1,703 students came in nearly five times worse than the prior year's 221. The budget had priced in a drip. It got a break. Bernard Terrace Elementary, Capitol Middle, Westminster Elementary -- these buildings are closed now, their students redistributed. If another 1,700 students leave next year, the remaining campuses will face the same half-empty-classroom calculus that justified this round of closures, and Superintendent Cole will be back before the board with a shorter list of schools and an even harder vote.

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