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.

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