The student population in Alexandria City Public Schools is projected to drop steadily over the next decade, driven mainly by residents having less kids.
That’s according to data from the Virginia Department of Health presented to the Joint City Council/School Board Subcommittee’s monthly meeting Monday night (May 18). The number of ACPS students is projected to increase slightly from 15,928 this year to 15,958 in 2027 before dropping to 15,415 by 2036 — a 3.4% decline from 2027.
Not all populations are projected to decrease. Elementary school enrollment is anticipated to drop about 3% between now and 2036, and middle school enrollment could fall nearly 10%. Alexandria City High School enrollment, however, is projected to peak at nearly 5,000 students in 2031 before gradually declining to 4,547 by 2036 — still a 1.5% increase over the 2027 projection of 4,480 students.
“The trend over the past five to 10 years has been a decrease in the number of births,” an ACPS staffer told the subcommittee. “The incoming [kindergarteners] replacing our seniors that are outgoing is slowing, and so we’re only seeing that marginal enrollment growth, whereas previously we saw huge jumps in enrollment growth over the past 20 years.”
Using data from the Virginia Department of Health, birth rates in Alexandria peaked in 2016 at 2,816 births and declined to 2,278 in 2024, a 19% decrease.
City Councilman John Taylor Chapman said future conversations will focus more on the services ACPS offers than the number of available seats.
“I think the bigger conversation is how we look at our spaces,” Chapman said. “It’s not really the numbers of kids in seats. It’s really that demographic breakdown of those kids and what the services they need, what a school looks like in those spaces, which is going to be, I think, a challenge for future projections.”
School Board Chair Michelle Rief said there’s a tendency to tie budget decisions to enrollment, despite rising costs for programming, staffing and capital improvements.
“What we don’t want is multiple schools to go below utilization, because that’s when people start talking about the need to close schools,” Rief said. “I don’t think we’re anywhere close to that right now, but I think you know that’s something that can happen when enrollment goes down.”
ACPS staff also noted that enrollment decreases are part of a regional trend, with declines observed in Fairfax County, Arlington, Montgomery County, Md. and Loudoun County.
Enrollment projections will be updated again in fall 2026 and will incorporate new enrollment trends since the previous fall.
