eStem Public Charter School - EdTribune AR - Arkansas Education Data

Little Rock Fell from #1 to #3 in Seven Years

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Through at least 14 consecutive years of data, Little Rock^↗ enrolled more students than any other district in Arkansas. That ended in 2019, when Springdale^↗ passed it. In 2025, Bentonville^↗ did the same. The state's capital city district, once unchallenged at the top, now sits third, 2,133 students behind Springdale and 980 behind Bentonville. Little Rock enrolled 18,964 students in 2025-26, down 26.3% from its 2008 peak of 25,738.

The 2025-26 loss of 601 students caps a three-year acceleration: the district lost 183 students in 2023-24, 387 in 2024-25, and 601 in 2025-26. Sixteen of the last 20 year-over-year transitions have been losses. Three of the four growth years occurred before 2009; the fourth was a negligible +41 in 2021-22.

Two Arkansases

The crossover at the top of the state's rankings reflects a deeper geographic divergence. Northwest Arkansas, anchored by Walmart's headquarters in Bentonville and a cluster of corporate campuses, has been one of the fastest-growing metro areas in the country. The region's population grew by more than 50,000 between 2020 and 2024, with Benton County adding 9,318 residents in a single year.

That population growth translates directly into school enrollment. Bentonville has more than doubled since 2004-05, growing from 9,210 to 19,944 students, a 116.5% increase. Springdale grew 46.0% over the same period, from 14,454 to 21,097. Little Rock's trajectory is the mirror image: down 5,460 from its 2004-05 level of 24,424, a 22.4% loss.

The gap at the 2026 endpoint tells the story. Springdale now enrolls 2,133 more students than Little Rock. Bentonville enrolls 980 more. Neither gap existed a decade ago. Little Rock held a 10,000-student lead over Springdale as recently as 2005.

Where the losses are deepest

The decline is not limited to one demographic group. Black enrollment, which has historically made up the majority of Little Rock's student body, fell from 16,738 in 2004-05 to 10,909 in 2025-26, a loss of 5,829 students (34.8%). White enrollment dropped from 5,968 to 3,410, a 42.9% decline. The only group that grew was Hispanic students, up from 1,226 to 3,326, a 171.3% increase. But that gain of 2,100 students replaced roughly a quarter of the 8,387 lost by Black and white students combined.

The composition has shifted accordingly. Black students made up 68.6% of enrollment in 2005 and 57.5% in 2026. White students dropped from 24.4% to 18.0%. Hispanic students rose from 5.0% to 17.5%, approaching the white share.

The state takeover and its aftermath

The steepest period of decline overlaps with a period of institutional disruption. On January 28, 2015, the Arkansas State Board of Education voted 5-4 to take over the Little Rock School District, immediately dissolving the elected school board. The takeover, officially justified by low-performing schools, lasted until 2019 when local control was partially restored.

During the four years from 2014-15 to 2018-19, the district lost 1,768 students, an average of 442 per year. That rate was steeper than the preceding period (2008-2013 averaged 429 lost per year) but not by much. The losses predated the takeover and continued after it. The enrollment data does not show a sharp discontinuity at either the takeover's beginning or its end.

What the data does show is that the losses never stopped. The post-takeover period, from 2018-19 to 2025-26, produced an additional 2,631 lost students, averaging 376 per year. The pace slowed slightly after the board was restored, but the direction held.

8,471 more students in LR-area charters

One factor shaping the landscape is the growth of charter schools in the Little Rock metro area. In 2004-05, charter-like entities in Pulaski County enrolled 474 students. By 2025-26, that figure had reached 8,945, a gain of 8,471.

LISA Academy^↗, which opened in 2004 with 163 students, has expanded to 4,320 students across multiple campuses, making it the largest charter operator in the Little Rock area. Academics Plus^↗ grew from 311 to 2,001 over the same period. eStem Public Charter School^↗ peaked at 3,202 in 2019-20 before declining to 2,018 in 2025-26.

The charter growth of 8,471 students exceeds Little Rock's total enrollment loss of 5,460 since 2005, but attributing the entire decline to charter competition would be an overreach. The district also lost students to demographic change and to families leaving Little Rock altogether. Census data cited by district officials indicates the eastern part of Little Rock has experienced significant loss of school-age children as families relocated. The Pulaski County Special School District^↗, which surrounds Little Rock, fell from 16,592 to 11,511 between 2014-15 and 2025-26, suggesting metro-wide population loss beyond what charter competition alone explains.

The LEARNS Act, signed in March 2023, added another channel. The law created universal Education Freedom Accounts that allow families to spend public funds on private school tuition. In its first year, fewer than 5% of participants had previously been enrolled in public schools, limiting the initial enrollment impact. But the program became universal in 2025-26, and statewide public school enrollment fell by 8,916 students, the steepest decline in 20 years.

What reporting suggests

"Since 2015, when we received $63,936,734 in state foundation funding, we have seen a decline to $38,479,428 in the same funding in 2024." — Arkansas Times, Nov. 2024

That $25.5 million loss in foundation funding over a decade reflects a formula that follows students. When a district loses enrollment, it loses money, even if its buildings and fixed costs remain. Little Rock now operates buildings with capacity for roughly 23,000 students while enrolling 18,964. Carver Elementary, in east Little Rock, was spending $16,886 per student while serving 232 students in a building designed for 634. The district board voted in late 2024 to consolidate and close schools, merging Carver into Washington Elementary and dispersing Brady Elementary students across six other schools.

"I think that these numbers are going to level off in the next couple of years, but I hope they do, quite frankly." — April Reisma, Arkansas Education Association president, KATV, Sept. 2025

A shrinking share of the state

Little Rock accounted for 5.5% of Arkansas enrollment at its 2008 peak. In 2025-26, that share fell to 4.1%. The decline reflects both the district losing students and statewide enrollment growth that Little Rock did not participate in. Arkansas added nearly 24,000 students between 2005 and 2020, with growth concentrated heavily in the northwest corner. Little Rock, the state's largest city, contributed nothing to it.

The 2025-26 acceleration -- 601 students lost after years of losing 200-400 per year -- could be a one-year anomaly tied to the LEARNS Act rollout or the beginning of a steeper trajectory. The district is navigating school consolidation, charter competition, and voucher expansion all at once. Each of those forces has its own timeline, and none of them is reversing.

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

Three Out of Four Arkansas Districts Still Below Pre-COVID Enrollment

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Arkansas public schools enrolled 479,432 students in 2019-20, the most in the state's modern history. Six years later, 14,011 of those students are gone, and the recovery that briefly appeared possible has collapsed. Of 216 districts with comparable data in both years, just 57 have returned to their pre-pandemic headcount, a recovery rate of 26.4%.

That number was improving. By 2022-23, 41.0% of districts had clawed back to their 2020 baseline. Then the trend reversed. Forty districts that had recovered by 2023 have since fallen back below their pre-COVID mark. The state's 2025-26 enrollment of 465,421 is now lower than the recovery's worst year, and the share of recovered districts has dropped to its lowest point since the pandemic itself.

The 2026 freefall

The single-year drop of 8,916 students in 2025-26 is the largest one-year decline in at least two decades of Arkansas enrollment data, exceeding the 6,428-student COVID loss in 2020-21 by 39%. In 2025-26, 191 of 257 districts (74.3%) lost students. The decline was not concentrated in a few large systems. It was everywhere.

Little Rock^↗ leads the state in absolute losses since 2020, shedding 2,508 students (11.7%). Springdale^↗, the state's largest district, lost 1,067 (4.8%). North Little Rock^↗ dropped 1,037 (12.8%), Fort Smith^↗ lost 931 (6.6%), and West Memphis^↗ lost 930 (18.0%). Smaller districts in central and eastern Arkansas were hit proportionally harder: Watson Chapel^↗ lost 32.4% of its students, Blytheville^↗ lost 33.1%, and Dumas^↗ lost 37.7%.

eStem Public Charter School^↗, a Little Rock charter network, lost 1,184 students since 2020, a 37.0% decline, the second-largest absolute loss in the state. The losses are not confined to any one sector or governance model.

A recovery that peaked and broke

The district-level recovery numbers tell a story of false hope. In the immediate aftermath of the 2020-21 COVID drop, 27.7% of districts managed to stay at or above their 2020 level. That share climbed steadily, reaching 41.0% by 2022-23, when the statewide total also briefly approached its pre-COVID mark at 476,579. Then something changed.

Between 2023 and 2026, the share of recovered districts fell from 41.0% to 26.9%, erasing three years of progress. Forty districts that had recovered by 2023 subsequently fell back below their 2020 baseline. Pine Bluff^↗ gained 132 students between 2020 and 2023, then lost 395 by 2026. Van Buren^↗ recovered 174 students by 2023 and has since given back 297.

Had pre-COVID growth trends continued, Arkansas would have enrolled roughly 484,300 students in 2025-26. The actual figure of 465,421 represents a gap of nearly 18,900 students from where the state was headed before the pandemic broke the trajectory.

Where the students went

Virtual schools absorbed a significant share of the post-COVID displacement. Arkansas Connections Academy grew from 1,597 students in 2020 to 5,780 in 2026. Arkansas Virtual Academy went from 2,474 to 5,779. Together, the two virtual schools gained 7,488 students since 2020, nearly 184% growth. Excluding them, brick-and-mortar districts lost a combined 21,499 students over the same period.

But virtual enrollment alone does not explain 2026. The largest single-year factor is the expansion of Arkansas's Education Freedom Account program, created by the LEARNS Act of 2023. In its first year (2023-24), 5,548 students participated. In 2024-25, the number rose to 14,256. In 2025-26, the first year the program opened to all K-12 students regardless of income or school rating, nearly 47,000 students were approved for roughly $6,864 each in state funds for private school tuition, homeschool expenses, or other educational services.

The timing aligns: the 2025-26 drop of 8,916 students is by far the largest in state history, and it coincides with the tripling of EFA participation. Still, the relationship is not straightforward. The Arkansas Times reported that most voucher recipients were not previously enrolled in public schools, suggesting the program's fiscal impact on districts may exceed its direct enrollment effect. Rogers Superintendent Jeff Perry told KUAF that the district lost roughly 600 students since 2023, while Bentonville Superintendent Debbie Jones said the financial impact is already measurable:

"I don't think that we have to guess: Will it have a financial impact? We've seen in a couple of short years of the program that it does have a financial impact on school districts." — KUAF, March 2026

Other forces compound the picture. Perry noted that immigration enforcement may have slowed the growth of Rogers's Hispanic student population, which makes up about 52% of the district. Birth rate declines continue to shrink incoming kindergarten cohorts nationally, and housing costs in northwest Arkansas have pushed some families to more affordable regions of the state, redistributing students without creating new ones.

The one exception

Bentonville^↗ is the only large district in Arkansas that has substantially grown since 2020, adding 2,096 students (11.7%). Northwest Arkansas's population boom, driven by Walmart's corporate presence, has insulated the district from the forces battering the rest of the state. Aside from Bentonville, the largest gains since 2020 all belong to virtual or charter entities: Arkansas Connections Academy (+4,183), Arkansas Virtual Academy (+3,305), and Lisa Academy (+1,495).

Among traditional brick-and-mortar districts with 1,000 or more students, few have fully recovered to 2020 levels. Farmington (+459), Pea Ridge (+434), Brookland (+382), and Gentry (+317) round out the winners. All are in the greater northwest Arkansas corridor. Central and eastern Arkansas have virtually no traditional districts above their pre-COVID enrollment.

The fixed-cost trap

The enrollment numbers alone understate the operational pressure on districts. At roughly $8,000 in state per-pupil funding, the statewide loss of 14,011 students since 2020 translates to more than $112 million in annual revenue that no longer follows those students into public school classrooms. But the schools those students left still exist. Their utility bills, bus routes, and building maintenance costs have not declined proportionally.

"Even just a small decline might push them over the edge into being in some sort of fiscal distress." — April Reisma, Arkansas Education Association, KUAF, March 2026

Aaron Conrad of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that districts face a structural bind: "The fixed costs for their buildings, maintenance, and utilities remain the same" even as enrollment shrinks. Little Rock, which has dropped below 19,000 students, is reducing its school board from nine members to seven. The district approved an audit of its special education services amid rising expenditures, and its preliminary goal for fiscal year 2027 is to cut $12 million to $15 million in operating costs.

The districts losing the most students in percentage terms are disproportionately small, rural, and located in the Delta or south Arkansas -- places with no compensating population growth and no easy way to consolidate fixed costs across a shrinking base.

What to watch next

The 2026-27 enrollment count will reveal whether the EFA program's first year of universal eligibility caused a one-time step change or the beginning of sustained annual losses. If another 8,000 to 9,000 students leave public rolls, Arkansas will fall below 460,000 for the first time since before 2005, the earliest year in this dataset.

For the 40 districts that recovered from COVID and then lost those gains, 2023 may have been their last good year. Voucher expansion, virtual school growth, and demographic decline have created a headwind that did not exist when the recovery began. For districts like Watson Chapel, which has lost a third of its students since 2020, the challenge is no longer recovery. It is survival.

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

One in 17 Arkansas Students Now Attends a Charter-Like School

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 12:00:00 GMT

Arkansas does not track charter schools with a formal flag in its enrollment data. Identify them by name, though, and the pattern is unmistakable: 17 entities matching charter, academy, and virtual keywords enrolled 27,451 students in 2025-26, up from 8,416 across 14 entities in 2014-15. Their share of statewide enrollment has more than tripled, from 1.8% to 5.9%.

That growth happened while the state's overall enrollment fell by 10,662 students. Traditional districts lost 29,697. The arithmetic is exact: traditional districts lost 19,035 more students than the statewide total declined. The charter-like sector gained 19,035. Whether those are the same students, or whether both trends have independent causes, the data cannot say.

A methodological caveat up front

The Arkansas Department of Education does not publish a charter school flag in its enrollment-by-race dataset. The analysis here uses a name-pattern proxy, matching entities whose names include terms like "charter," "academy," "virtual," "eStem," or "Haas Hall." This captures the universe of open-enrollment charters and virtual schools but is inherently approximate. Imboden Charter School District^↗, for instance, is a traditional district that happens to carry "charter" in its name (53 students). Its inclusion does not materially change the sector totals.

All enrollment numbers come from the ADE Data Center. The sector labels are the analysis's own classification, not the state's.

Two sectors hiding inside one label

The 5.9% headline number conceals a structural split. Of the 27,451 students in charter-like entities, 11,559 attend just two virtual schools: Arkansas Connections Academy^↗ (5,780) and Arkansas Virtual Academy^↗ (5,779). Together they account for 42.1% of the sector's enrollment.

The brick-and-mortar side, 15 entities enrolling 15,892 students, grew at a steadier pace. Virtual enrollment is the volatile component. Arkansas Virtual Academy sat at a flat 499-500 students from 2008 through 2013, suggesting a regulatory cap. By 2015, it had jumped to 1,647. Connections Academy launched in 2016-17 with 343 students; eight years later it enrolls 5,780.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the virtual side. Between 2018-19 and 2020-21, virtual enrollment in the two schools surged from 3,597 to 6,708, an 86.5% increase. Brick-and-mortar charters grew 16% over the same period. Virtual enrollment dipped slightly in 2022 and 2023 as the pandemic receded, then resumed climbing: 7,741 in 2023-24, 9,844 in 2024-25, and 11,559 in 2025-26.

The growth trajectory is not smooth

The sector as a whole actually shrank in 2021-22 and 2022-23, losing 411 and 391 students respectively. That contraction reflected real churn: seven entities present in 2018-19 had disappeared from the data by 2025-26, including Little Rock Preparatory Academy (361 students in 2019), Haas Hall Bentonville (419), and Pine Bluff Lighthouse Academy (273).

The dip proved temporary. The sector added 1,077 students in 2023-24, then 2,528, then 3,007 in 2025-26, the largest annual gain since 2019. The acceleration coincides with the LEARNS Act, signed by Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders in March 2023, which removed the cap on charter school authorizations and created the Education Freedom Account voucher program.

Who attends charter-like schools

The charter-like sector serves a different demographic mix than traditional districts. Black students make up 23.7% of charter-like enrollment but 18.8% of traditional enrollment. Asian students are 5.2% versus 1.8%. White students are 47.7% of the charter-like sector, compared with 57.1% of traditional districts. Hispanic enrollment is roughly equal in both sectors (15.9% vs. 15.4%).

LISA Academy^↗, the largest brick-and-mortar charter network at 4,320 students, is STEM-focused and has expanded to 10 campuses across the state, including a hybrid model launched in 2021. It has grown from 163 students in 2004-05 to become the sector's third-largest entity.

eStem Public Charter School^↗ tells the opposite story. After peaking at 3,202 students in 2019-20 (when three separately reported campuses had consolidated under one LEA code), it has declined to 2,018, a 37.0% drop in six years. The decline accelerated after 2022, losing 150 to 380 students annually.

The LEARNS Act and the new competitive landscape

The LEARNS Act reshaped Arkansas school choice in three ways relevant to charter enrollment. First, it removed the numerical cap on open-enrollment charter authorizations. Second, it directed poorly performing districts to partner with charter operators. Third, it created Education Freedom Accounts, which by 2025-26 had approved nearly 47,000 participants, at a projected cost of $327 million.

The EFA program is distinct from charter enrollment. EFA funds flow to private schools and homeschool families, not to public charter schools. But the two programs share a policy ecosystem. The cap removal encourages new charter openings; the voucher program signals a broader shift toward family choice that may accelerate transfers from traditional districts to all non-traditional options.

"95 percent of them already were attending private schools, so this was just an additional expense for the Arkansas taxpayer." — April Reisma, president of the Arkansas Education Association, via KATV, Jan. 2026

That critique applies to the EFA voucher program specifically, not to charter growth. But it underscores the difficulty of disentangling true transfers from enrollment that was never in public schools to begin with.

What traditional districts are losing

The 29,697-student decline in traditional districts since 2014-15 is not spread evenly. Pulaski County Special School District^↗ lost 5,081 students (30.6%), Little Rock School District^↗ lost 4,399 (18.8%), and Pine Bluff^↗ lost 1,582 (37.3%). Delta and southeastern districts bore disproportionate losses.

The divergence chart indexed to 2014-15 tells the story: traditional enrollment has drifted steadily downward to 93.6% of its baseline while charter-like enrollment has risen to 326.2%. But the absolute numbers matter. The traditional sector still enrolls 437,970 students, 94.1% of the state total. The charter-like sector, for all its growth, remains small.

Northwest Arkansas is the one region where traditional districts are growing. Bentonville^↗ added 4,447 students since 2014-15 (+28.7%), driven by population growth in the Walmart headquarters corridor. Fayetteville, Pea Ridge, and Farmington also gained. The charter-like entities with Northwest Arkansas roots, Haas Hall Academy and Arkansas Arts Academy, have also grown, but the traditional districts in that region are gaining students on net.

What comes next

At 5.9%, Arkansas's charter-like sector is still smaller than the national average for states with mature charter laws. The LEARNS Act's removal of the charter cap creates room for further growth, and as many as 18 new charter applications were in the pipeline for 2024-25. If even half succeed and reach scale, the sector could approach 8% within a few years. Whether virtual schools, which have added 7,962 students since 2019, continue to drive that growth or brick-and-mortar operators catch up will determine what "charter growth" actually means: more physical schools in communities, or more students learning from home.

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

Arkansas Lost More Students This Year Than COVID Took

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 12:00:00 GMT

The COVID-19 pandemic was supposed to be the shock. In 2020-21, Arkansas public schools lost 6,428 students in a single year, the kind of enrollment hit that prompts emergency budget meetings and anxious headlines. It took three years to claw back roughly half of what was lost.

Then 2025-26 erased all of it, and then some.

Arkansas public schools enrolled 465,421 students this year, down 8,916 from the prior year. That is a 1.9% decline in a single year, the largest on record in 21 years of state data, and 39% larger than the COVID drop. The state now sits 14,011 students below its pre-pandemic peak of 479,432 in 2019-20 and at its lowest enrollment since 2005-06.

A record nobody wanted

The scale of this year's loss is visible in the year-over-year record. Before 2020-21, the largest single-year decline in the dataset was just 940 students in 2018-19. The COVID year shattered that pattern with a loss of 6,428. But even COVID left the state above 473,000. The 2025-26 figure of 465,421 is a level Arkansas has not seen since the 2005-06 school year.

The post-COVID recovery, such as it was, peaked in 2022-23 at 476,579 students, recovering 3,575 of the 6,428 lost, or about 55.6%. Then the trajectory reversed. The state shed 1,372 students in 2023-24, another 870 in 2024-25, and then 8,916 this year. The three-year combined loss of 11,158 amounts to 2.3% of the 2023 enrollment.

Three out of four districts shrank

The decline was not concentrated in a handful of struggling urban cores. Of 258 districts with data in both years, 192 lost students, 74.4% of the total. Only 65 grew, and one was flat.

Little Rock^↗ led all districts with a loss of 601 students (-3.1%), followed by Springdale^↗ at 559 (-2.6%) and Fort Smith^↗ at 478 (-3.5%). Conway^↗ lost 369 (-3.7%) and Pulaski County Special^↗ lost 362 (-3.0%). These five districts alone account for 2,369 students, about 27% of the net statewide loss.

But the breadth matters more than the concentration. Mid-size districts like Russellville^↗ (-183, or -3.4%), Siloam Springs^↗ (-265, or -5.8%), and Lake Hamilton^↗ (-207, or -5.4%) posted losses well above the statewide average. eStem Public Charter School^↗, a well-regarded B-rated charter, lost 340 students, a staggering 14.4% of its enrollment.

The single notable exception: Bentonville^↗ gained 369 students (+1.9%), driven by the ongoing population boom in Northwest Arkansas anchored by the Walmart, Tyson Foods, and J.B. Hunt corporate campuses. Bentonville is now the state's second-largest district at 19,944 students, closing the gap with Springdale's 21,097.

The voucher question

The most obvious variable that changed between 2024-25 and 2025-26 is the full expansion of the Education Freedom Accounts program created by the Arkansas LEARNS Act. For its first two years, participation was capped and restricted to specific student categories. This year, every K-12 student in Arkansas became eligible, and participation surged.

According to state budget documents, roughly 28,100 students received EFA accounts for private school attendance and another 18,500 for homeschooling or microschool enrollment in 2025-26, at a projected cost of $326 million. That is a dramatic increase from the 14,297 participants in the program's second year and 5,548 in its first.

But the relationship between those numbers and the enrollment loss is not straightforward. A fiscal analysis by Reason Foundation estimated that only 27.5% of second-year EFA participants were "switchers" who would have otherwise attended public school. In the first year, the rate was 34.8%. The rest were students already enrolled in private schools, homeschooled, or entering kindergarten for the first time. If the switcher rate held at roughly 25-35% for the expanded third year, that would account for somewhere between 7,000 and 16,000 actual departures from public schools, a range wide enough to explain most, all, or more than all of the 8,916-student loss.

The honest answer: nobody knows the precise switcher rate for 2025-26 yet. The data does not exist in the enrollment files.

Birth rates: the slow-motion factor

The other force at work predates the LEARNS Act by more than a decade. Arkansas births peaked in 2007 and have declined nearly every year since, with roughly 4,000 fewer children born per year by 2017 compared to the peak. Those smaller cohorts have been working their way through the K-12 pipeline. By fall 2021, every grade from kindergarten through eighth consisted of students born during the declining-birth-rate era.

"The state will likely lose more than 15,000 students" over the following five years as smaller birth cohorts replace larger graduating classes. -- Talk Business & Politics, August 2019

That projection, made before anyone had heard of COVID-19 or Education Freedom Accounts, anticipated sustained demographic losses on roughly the scale the state is now experiencing. Hot Springs^↗ Superintendent Mike Hernandez told the Democrat-Gazette that he attributes his district's 3.4% enrollment drop since 2023-24 to shrinking birth rates, a trend visible in districts across the state regardless of school grades.

Virtual schools grew while everything else fell

The sector-level data offers one more clue about where students went. Arkansas Connections Academy^↗ grew by 1,205 students (+26.3%) and Arkansas Virtual Academy^↗ by 510 (+9.7%), bringing the combined virtual enrollment to 11,559, nearly triple its pre-COVID level of 4,071 in 2019-20. Virtual schools have grown every year since the pandemic, a pattern not reversed by the return to in-person schooling.

Traditional districts absorbed the full force of the decline and then some. The charter sector (brick-and-mortar charters, identified by name) was essentially flat, with losses at eStem (-340) and others roughly offset by gains at Exalt Academy^↗ (+355) and Graduate Arkansas Charter^↗ (+250). The virtual sector was the only one to post clear growth.

Whether virtual enrollment growth represents families choosing a different public school model or an intermediate step before leaving public education entirely, the data cannot say.

The racial composition of the loss

White students accounted for 7,863 of the 8,916-student decline, or 88.2% of the total loss. Black enrollment fell by 1,593, and Hispanic enrollment fell by 1,157. Only Asian students (+327) and multiracial students (+1,449) posted gains.

The disproportionate white loss is consistent with both the EFA program's initial demographic profile and longer-running demographic trends. White students have declined from 69.4% of Arkansas enrollment in 2004-05 to 56.5% in 2025-26, a 12.9 percentage-point drop over two decades. Hispanic enrollment has grown from 6.0% to 15.4% over the same period, and multiracial students from near zero to 5.4%. This year's loss accelerated those trajectories but did not create them.

Hispanic enrollment declined for the first time in 21 years of data, after growing every single year since 2004-05. The 2025-26 drop cut across demographic lines, not just along them.

96 districts at their lowest point ever

Among the 259 districts in the 2026 data, 96 now sit at their lowest enrollment in the full 21-year dataset, 37.1% of all districts. That figure includes small rural districts that have been declining for decades and mid-size suburban districts that were growing as recently as 2022.

The funding implications are immediate. Arkansas allocates foundation funding on a per-pupil basis, and state officials have argued that historic funding increases mean districts can absorb a 2.5% enrollment loss before budgets are affected. But 122 of 258 districts, nearly half, lost more than 2.5% this year.

"The enrollment shift means already underfunded public schools face challenges that are 'only going to get more dire.'" -- April Reisma, Arkansas Education Association president, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, January 2026

What 2026-27 might reveal

The 2025-26 drop cannot be pinned on any single cause. Birth-rate-driven pipeline shrinkage was already forecast to cost Arkansas 15,000 or more students by the mid-2020s. The LEARNS Act's universal EFA expansion added a powerful pull factor in the same window. Virtual enrollment tripled over six years for reasons distinct from either.

The 2026-27 count will show whether this year was a one-time adjustment as pent-up demand for the EFA program was released, or the beginning of a steeper decline. If the switcher rate stabilizes and no new cohort of public school families applies for vouchers, the losses could moderate. If the program continues to grow and smaller birth cohorts continue to enter kindergarten, the state could fall below 460,000 within a year.

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