Public schools across the state are losing enrollment. That's true even in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, which has long attracted families to the area with its reputation for strong academics and local funding.
That district's school board expects to vote this week to study whether to close up to two elementary schools in fall 2027, at the earliest. The board is narrowing the criteria for that study, and a short list of three to five possible schools for consideration. Under state law, a school must be part of the study to be closed, but the board will make its decision later this spring after reviewing the results.
Hundreds of families packed the most recent meeting to advocate for their schools by speaking during the board's public comment session. The speakers ranged from children, to a PE teacher whose job could be in danger, to parents who said they moved to Chapel Hill just for a school that now might close.
To understand the issue, WUNC News' Education Reporter Liz Schlemmer spoke with the school board's Chair Riza Jenkins.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Why is it necessary for your district to close schools, and why now?
Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools has been experiencing financial challenges over the past few years as a result of declining enrollment, shifts in how public schools are funded, and the reality of increasing costs to operate schools across our district.
If we do not act as a school district, we will have a multi-million dollar shortfall when it comes to our budget. Under state law, we are required to produce a balanced budget for our school district, and so we are trying to get ahead of what we see occurring if we do nothing in the next few years.
I understand you've received advice from demographers. What have they told you about the reasons why the district is losing enrollment?
Birth rates are declining, not only in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City schools, but across the country. These are trends that many school districts and communities are facing.
Also the patterns of who (is) moving and living in our community are changing. We are starting to see a lot more residents who are 65 and older moving to our community, versus families with young children.
We are seeing still — and this has always been the case — families choosing to enroll their kids in charter schools and private schools, but not as much as some of our neighboring school districts and communities. So although that's a small part of some of our enrollment decline … quite honestly, it's really that birth rate or the number of kids who are coming into our schools.
Can you explain how closing a school saves the district money?
We'll be able to save a couple million dollars with some staff efficiency, where we are undersized with our classes.
I would say, think about it. We have a school that operates with 500 students. They have all of the same staff: a principal, a nurse, a school counselor. It's the same whether the school has 250 kids. That's where some of the savings are going to happen.
Then we save in some short-term operational costs, such as utilities. And then we save long term operationally with some of the major maintenance in many of these schools that we will not have to pay, to the tune of anywhere between $5 million to $10 million.
As in, if you needed a new HVAC system for the school, right?
HVAC and things like that, right.
We do have class size limits in the elementary school per state law. However, many of our classrooms are operating well below those class size limits because — and I don't have the exact numbers* — but let's say the state law says 20 kids is the cap for a particular classroom. Well, if we have 22 kids … that means we end up splitting up that classroom into a classroom of each 11 kids.
That is going on across the district in our elementary schools. And you walk in, and it's lovely to see, but we can't operate like that because of how the state funds us, correct? Because then that means we're spending a lot of our money locally to supplement and make some of these things happen, because the state is only going to fund us but so much.
*Note: NC class size limits are 18 in kindergarten, 16 in first grade, and 17 in second and third grade. The state funds teacher salaries for one classroom teacher per group, based on total enrollment in each grade across a district rather than by school. In 2025, state lawmakers filed a bill to make those caps a suggestion rather than a requirement, but that bill did not pass.
One speaker during the last public comment session said the elephant in the room is that the state legislature has underfunded public schools statewide. What are some of the bigger forces at play?
Well, that speaker hit it on the head. You know, the responsibility to fund public schools does start with the state.
Community members need to realize it's really the state who are supposed to be funding the operational budget for our district. Unfortunately and luckily, our county actually is a big supporter of public schools and public education, and they do a phenomenal job of funding public schools.
However, like all elected bodies, we are feeling funding cuts not just from the state, but also the federal government, and so the county's ability to do what they have done for years is getting more difficult for them.
At the last board meeting, several people commented that it feels terrible to see school communities competing against each other, advocating to stay open. What process is the district taking to make this decision, and how are you trying to make it fair?
School closure is governed by state law, so there's not really a lot of wiggle room for us as a board in terms of the process, which is:
We must identify the schools that we are going to study for the closure. We must determine the criteria for the closure. We must task our staff with completing the closure study. We must have a public hearing, and then we as a board, must vote and make a decision in terms of which schools are going to close.
What are the next steps?
Hopefully we as a board will be able to move towards finalizing and taking a vote on the schools that we are going to identify for the study, and also the criteria. So that is the hope, that we can move this process along.
A key part of this is, once we close the school, we have to move into redistricting. And even though we're talking about three schools, five schools, however many schools, the reality is, redistricting is going to impact our entire district, and so we want to make sure we're starting to have those conversations earlier versus waiting until later.
For more information about this topic, see CHCCS' website about the closure and consolidation issue.
