West Virginia schools have lost 2.5% of their students in the past year, state Superintendent Michele Blatt said today.
The state’s student enrollment is now 234,957 students, Blatt said during a state Board of Education meeting.
The state counted 241,024 students in 2024–2025, and West Virginia has experienced a 6.35% decline from 250,899 students in 2021–2022, according to the annual enrollment data book.
The ongoing loss of student population has been a major factor in a wave of school closures across the state.
Within the past week, the Roane County Board of Education voted to close two elementary/middle schools and consolidate students into other nearby schools.
The Barbour County Board of Education has voted to close middle schools throughout the county. And Randolph County has also dealt with closures and consolidations this year.
The state experienced a wave of school consolidations last year, one thatBlatt told lawmakers earlier this year was historic. Blatt told lawmakers that she anticipated the trend would continue.
West Virginia school enrollment plummeted by nearly 13% from 2012 to 2024, a period that overlapped with several factors including the covid-19 pandemic. More than 36,000 students left the public school system during that time.
From last year to this year, Blatt said today, 53 of 55 districts experienced enrollment decreases. Only Tyler and Doddridge counties experienced school enrollment growth, she said.
“We’ve heard a lot about — there’s declining enrollment in our state as a whole, and that’s also affecting our school systems,” Blatt said.
“And so that kind of brings us to a lot of the discussions we’ve seen on the news and that we’ve heard here recently about school closures and consolidations that are having to take place due to our declining population in the state and declining enrollment in our schools.”
Micah Whitlow, director of school facilities, followed up to say local school systems face difficult choices.
“They’re the ones that decide what schools to close, where those kids would go, the time frame. All that is developed at the county level. You know, counties are making these decisions based on real problems like these. These things aren’t done on a whim or they just woke up one day thinking about this,” Whitlow said.
“Some of them are staff shortages, finances, deteriorating facilities or some of them, all those together. So they’re making these decisions on real, real problems.”