Introduction to the Issue
Houston ISD campuses are operating at 77% capacity, leaving room for more than 35,000 additional students, according to the latest report from Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. There are close to 177,000 students enrolled in Texas’ largest district, a decline of about 40,000 in the last decade. Considering the 250-plus HISD campuses and permanent buildings, the district has the capacity to fit nearly 212,500 students.
The Current State of Enrollment
"We have significantly more capacity than we have students," said Bill King, one of the report’s authors. The report comes weeks after the school district’s state-appointed board of managers revealed it’s considering closing an undisclosed number of schools for the 2026-27 school year. But King emphasized the importance of looking closely at the data. "You’ve got this real uneven disparity between schools that don’t have enough kids and schools that have too many kids," he said.
Key Findings of the Report
Some of the top findings of the report include:
- Enrollment at 51 campuses is less than 50% of their building capacity, and enrollment at 81 campuses is between 50-75% capacity.
- Enrollment at 60 campuses surpasses 100% of their building capacity, of which 22 are above 120%.
Most of the campuses that are overcrowded are concentrated on the more affluent west side of the district, according to the report. Meanwhile, campuses that are under capacity are largely on the east side.
Possible Solutions
"I think clearly you need to increase capacity on the west side, and you probably need to be consolidating some facilities on the east side," King said. This report also comes months after Houston voters in November rejected a $4.4 billion bond package that would have gone toward rebuilding dozens of campuses and renovating others. That sparked King’s idea to conduct this project. "After it failed and by such a wide margin, I thought, ‘Well, it’d be interesting to see what’s going on as far as capacity in all these schools," said King, who co-chaired HISD’s 2012 bond campaign.
Factors Contributing to Declining Enrollment
Multiple factors are in play when looking into HISD’s slipping enrollment, King said, such as people moving to Houston’s suburbs, parents choosing charter schools and lower birth rates. King estimates that around 60% of HISD’s enrollment drop is because students moved to charter schools, and that around 40% was "just an absolute population drop." "So, this is not a question of them leaving, it’s a question of us not having as many kids anymore," he said.
Demographic Shifts
Houston’s population growth has stagnated in recent years, and King said growth is mostly of people in their 20s and 30s who are "mostly people from other countries, but they don’t seem to be having a lot of kids." The report includes a population pyramid of the school district, showing that there are far fewer children than there are adults in their 20s. This trend is common among other big cities across the country, like Chicago, which is in its ninth straight year of a declining population and Los Angeles, which is in its fifth.
Conclusion
"There’s not going to be one simple solution to this, but I think we probably need to close some elementary schools," King said. King said Houston’s population also is shifting, and HISD’s campuses are no longer concentrated where most students live. "We have a bunch of schools that are down, but we have a bunch of schools that are over-enrolled," King said. "And when you look at the demographics, you can tell it’s been so long since we built schools in Houston that the demographics kind of outran what we were doing. And so, we’ve got schools in the wrong places, basically."
