Auburn - EdTribune ME - Maine Education Data

78% of Maine Districts Never Recovered From COVID

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In this series: Maine 2025-26 Enrollment.

In the spring of 2023, Maine's public school enrollment ticked up for the second consecutive year. The COVID shock appeared to be fading. Districts that had lost hundreds of students were cautiously optimistic.

That optimism lasted exactly one year. Since 2023, Maine has lost 5,003 students across three accelerating years of decline, wiping out the post-COVID bounce and then some. The state now enrolls 168,923 students, an all-time low, and sits 11,436 students below where pre-COVID trends projected it would be. Of the state's 214 districts with sufficient data, just 47, or 22%, have returned to their pre-pandemic enrollment levels. The rest are still in the crater.

Three years of acceleration

The raw numbers tell a compounding story. Maine lost 1,307 students in 2023-24, then 1,562 in 2024-25, then 2,134 in 2025-26. That final figure is the largest single-year loss since the COVID plunge of 7,859 in 2020-21, and it is 11 times the average annual change Maine experienced in the three pre-pandemic years.

The post-COVID recovery was real but fleeting. In 2021-22 and 2022-23, Maine added back 1,456 students. The current three-year decline has erased that recovery more than three times over.

What makes this acceleration unusual is its timing. Five years out from the pandemic, most states have settled into a stable post-COVID trajectory, whether that means slow decline, stagnation, or recovery. Maine's losses are getting larger each year. The state has moved from losing 0.75% of enrollment in 2024 to 1.25% in 2026.

The big districts are losing

The 22% recovery rate masks a sharper divide by district size. Among districts enrolling 2,000 or more students, only four of 27, or 14.8%, have recovered to pre-COVID levels. Mid-size districts (500 to 1,999 students) fare even worse: just four of 57, or 7.0%, have recovered. The highest recovery rates belong to the smallest districts, those under 100 students, where 34% have bounced back. But those tiny districts collectively educate a fraction of the state's children.

Portland^↗, the state's largest district, enrolled 6,302 students in 2025-26, down 422 from its 2019 level of 6,724, a 6.3% decline. South Portland^↗ lost 229 students over the same period, a 7.7% drop, and is proposing to cut nearly 80 positions and potentially close an elementary school. Auburn^↗ is down 275 from 2019. Bangor^↗ is down 233.

The districts that have recovered tend to cluster in southern Maine's growth corridor. Saco^↗ gained 126 students since 2019, reaching 1,909. Gorham^↗ added 64 to reach 2,853. Sanford^↗ grew by 64 to 3,230. These are suburbs and exurbs of Portland, communities benefiting from the same pandemic-era migration that brought new residents to southern Maine while the state's interior continued to empty.

Where did the students go?

The 11,884 students missing from Maine's public schools since 2019 did not simply vanish. Several forces are pulling in the same direction.

The most measurable is homeschooling. Maine had roughly 6,800 homeschooled students before the pandemic. By 2024-25, that number had risen to approximately 10,100, a 50% increase that has proven sticky. In more than 50 districts, primarily in central and northern Maine, at least one in 10 students is now homeschooled. Religious co-ops have expanded alongside the trend: Calvary Belfast Academy, a faith-based homeschool cooperative, has doubled in size since launching three years ago.

Beneath the homeschool shift lies a deeper demographic current. Maine has experienced more deaths than births for over a decade, and the kindergarten pipeline reflects this: the state enrolled 1,879 fewer kindergartners in 2026 than in 2017, a 14.8% drop. Fewer births five and six years ago are now arriving as smaller kindergarten cohorts.

The Maine Department of Education has also pointed to early college programs and adult education as factors pulling older students out of traditional enrollment counts. Adult education enrollment is up statewide, providing high school completion pathways that reduce the headcount at traditional high schools without necessarily meaning fewer young people are being educated.

What reporting suggests

The consequences are materializing in school budgets and building closures. Maine's three largest southern districts have proposed deep staffing reductions for 2026-27, driven by declining enrollment, rising salary and health care costs, and property valuation shifts that reduce state aid.

"Between our two small elementary schools, we have nine empty classrooms... buildings still require the same level of heat and care." -- Matthew Cyr, RSU 34 Superintendent, Maine Public, July 2025

School closures have accelerated to match. More schools closed in Maine through mid-2025 than in all of 2024, with district leaders citing declining enrollment, aging infrastructure, and rising local costs. In RSU 4, Sabattus Primary School, open since 1953, shut its doors. In RSU 34, Viola Rand Elementary closed after enrollment made its nine empty classrooms untenable. These are not large urban consolidations. They are small community schools, often the primary civic space in their towns, closing because there are not enough children to justify the building.

The structural mismatch

The fiscal challenge is not simply that enrollment is falling. It is that costs do not fall at the same rate. A district that loses 30 students does not need one fewer teacher. It does not heat one fewer hallway. Per-pupil state funding follows students out the door, but the building, the bus route, and the special education staff remain. The Maine Policy Institute has noted that migration alone cannot offset the gap between a growing labor force participation shortfall and declining school enrollment. Even the pandemic-era population surge of 34,237 new residents between April 2020 and July 2022, a 190% increase over typical growth, has not translated into sustained enrollment recovery.

This creates a particular bind for Maine's 171 districts that enroll fewer than 500 students. These districts, 67% of all districts in the state, have the least capacity to absorb fixed costs across a shrinking student body. Yet they also serve the rural communities least able to transport children to consolidated alternatives.

Six years and counting

In Sabattus, the primary school that opened in 1953 is closed. In Bradley, Viola Rand Elementary is empty. In RSU 34, superintendent Matthew Cyr counted nine unused classrooms across two buildings before making the decision to consolidate.

These districts did not plan for six years of shortfall. They planned for a bounce that came in 2022, lasted 18 months, and vanished. The 167 districts still below their 2019 enrollment are not waiting for recovery anymore. They are managing permanent contraction -- and the next state valuation, due in spring 2027, will recalculate aid based on where the numbers actually landed, not where anyone hoped they would.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Maine Lost More Students This Year Than Any Since COVID

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In this series: Maine 2025-26 Enrollment.

South Portland is preparing to cut nearly 80 positions, 42 of them teachers, and close an elementary school. Portland^↗ proposed eliminating 20 jobs from a $180 million budget. Lewiston^↗ is making staffing cuts to balance its books. Three of Maine's largest districts are dismantling staff in the same budget cycle, and the reason is the same in each: fewer students, more costs, and a funding formula that follows the child out the door.

Maine enrolled 168,923 public school students in 2025-26, an all-time low for the decade-long dataset and a loss of 2,134 from the prior year. That is the largest single-year decline since the COVID shock of 2020-21, when 7,859 students vanished from the rolls. The difference is that COVID was a one-time disruption. This is a trend that is picking up speed.

Each year worse than the last

The three-year pattern tells the story more clearly than any single number. Maine lost 1,307 students in 2023-24, then 1,562 in 2024-25, then 2,134 in 2025-26. Each year's loss exceeded the one before, and the combined three-year total of 5,003 students dwarfs the post-COVID bounce of 1,456 that briefly suggested recovery in 2021-22 and 2022-23.

That bounce is now fully erased. The 5,003-student loss over three years exceeds it by a factor of 3.4, meaning the state has not merely returned to its pre-pandemic trajectory but has fallen well below it. Before COVID, Maine was losing an average of 196 students per year. The current three-year average is roughly 1,670 per year, more than eight times the pre-pandemic pace.

The 1.2% decline in 2025-26 may sound modest in isolation. It is not. It is the largest percentage decline in any non-COVID year in the dataset, and it follows two years that already ranked among the worst. Put together, the three-year run from 2024 through 2026 erased 5,003 students while the two-year COVID bounce recovered only 1,456.

The pipeline is shrinking from the bottom

The enrollment math is relentless. In 2025-26, Maine enrolled 10,786 kindergartners and graduated 13,665 seniors, a K-to-12th-grade ratio of 78.9. For every 100 students leaving, roughly 79 are entering. That ratio stood at 95.6 in 2020, when kindergarten briefly peaked at 13,071. After a COVID-year dip and partial recovery, it has fallen steadily since 2022 and now sits well below the 90.7 recorded in 2017.

The kindergarten decline is steep: 10,786 in 2026, down 17.5% from the 2020 peak. Grade 12 enrollment, by contrast, has been roughly flat, fluctuating between 13,659 and 14,119 over the past decade. The result is a widening gap at the bottom of the pipeline that guarantees continued enrollment losses even if not a single family leaves the state.

Pre-K tells a different story. Maine enrolled 7,016 pre-kindergartners in 2025-26, up 30% from 5,395 in 2016-17, reflecting expanded public pre-K programs. But that growth has not translated into kindergarten gains, suggesting either that pre-K is absorbing children who would not otherwise have entered the public system until kindergarten, or that the families using public pre-K are choosing other options for elementary school.

The oldest state's structural problem

Maine is the oldest state in the nation by median age, at 44.8 years, with 23% of its population over 65. It is one of 17 states that experienced natural population decline in 2024, meaning more deaths than births. The state's total population grew 0.5% in 2025, but that growth came entirely from migration: 7,406 domestic migrants and 4,040 international migrants, not from births.

The national birth rate has fallen more than 20% since 2007, but the decline hits Maine harder because the state had fewer women of childbearing age to begin with. Maine's fertility rate stood at 47.0 per 1,000 women ages 15-44 in 2023, according to the March of Dimes, below the national average. When a state's school-age pipeline is already thin, even modest birth rate declines translate directly into classroom losses.

Housing affordability is a competing explanation. Tracy Richter, vice president of planning services at HPM, a national school facilities consultancy, told Maine Public that birth rates alone do not explain the pattern:

"I think that the birth rates are going to stay low, but that's not all of it."

Richter pointed to the lack of affordable housing options that keeps young families from putting down roots in communities with school-age children. In Maine, where housing costs in southern coastal communities have risen steeply, that pressure may be pushing families to cheaper housing markets outside the state or into rural areas with even smaller school systems.

162 districts shrank, 93 hit bottom

The decline is not evenly distributed, but it is widespread. Of 254 districts and SAUs reporting enrollment in 2025-26, 162 lost students, 68 gained, and 13 were flat. Nearly two out of three districts are shrinking.

More strikingly, 93 districts recorded their lowest enrollment of the past decade, 36.6% of all reporting entities. RSU 10, covering the Rumford and Mexico area, lost 883 students over the decade, a 34.4% decline. RSU 02 in the Farmington area fell 31.5%. RSU 03 in Unity dropped 28.0%.

Portland, Maine's largest district, lost 253 students in a single year, dropping from 6,555 to 6,302. Over the full decade, the city has shed 445 students, a 6.6% decline. South Portland^↗ fell to 2,750, its lowest point in the dataset, down 9.4% from 2017.

Two of the state's largest districts bucked the trend. Lewiston^↗ added 36 students in 2025-26, reaching 5,349, though it remains well below its pre-COVID level of 5,574 in 2018-19. Auburn^↗ gained 66, its second consecutive year of growth after a seven-year slide that bottomed out at 3,179 in 2023-24. Both cities have significant immigrant and refugee populations, particularly Somali and African communities, that have partially offset the demographic pressures squeezing other districts.

Two out of three Maine districts now enroll fewer than 500 students. Eighty-five enroll fewer than 100. At that scale, losing even five students can mean losing a teacher, and losing a teacher can mean combining grades or cutting a program.

The budget math is arriving

The consequences are no longer hypothetical. Maine's Essential Programs and Services (EPS) funding formula allocates state aid on a per-pupil basis. When enrollment falls, so does state funding, but the fixed costs of maintaining buildings, heating classrooms, and running bus routes do not fall at the same rate.

"The only way that you're going to cut millions of dollars from a budget is by cutting positions." — Jesse Hargrove, Maine Education Association, March 2026

Across Portland, South Portland, and Lewiston, preliminary 2026-27 budgets proposed cutting more than 125 positions combined. About 40% of Maine's districts will see their state share decrease next year. South Portland's proposed cuts would eliminate 42 teaching positions, 16 educational technicians, and potentially close an elementary school to hold its tax increase to 6%.

Eric Waddell of the Maine School Management Association warned that the cuts may disproportionately target support staff:

"All these incredibly critically important jobs in our school that aren't necessarily viewed as providing direct care."

The school closure pace is accelerating in tandem. Fifteen schools closed in the first half of 2025, compared with 14 in all of 2024. In RSU 34, superintendent Matthew Cyr noted the district had "nine empty classrooms" between two small elementary schools before closing Viola Rand Elementary. MSAD 17 unified Waterford Memorial School and Harrison Elementary after neither building had enough students to justify a principal, saving roughly $400,000.

The budget season ahead

South Portland is weighing whether to close an elementary school. The district proposed eliminating 42 teaching positions, 16 educational technicians, and holding its tax increase to 6%. Across town, the heating bills have not changed. The bus routes have not shortened.

The EPS formula reform bill now before the Legislature proposes nine changes, including adjustments for community poverty and regional cost of living. District leaders have called the current formula outdated and inequitable. But the reform addresses how money flows, not how much there is. Augusta will vote on the formula. Birth certificates will determine the enrollment. And in RSU 34, the nine empty classrooms that prompted Viola Rand Elementary's closure are already being repurposed -- the question every superintendent in Maine is asking is which building is next.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Lewiston Is Growing While Maine Shrinks

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In this series: Maine 2025-26 Enrollment.

Across the river from Auburn, which has lost 331 students since 2017, Lewiston^↗ is doing something almost no district in Maine can claim. It is growing. Three consecutive years of enrollment gains, from a trough of 5,085 students in 2023 to 5,349 in 2026, have made Maine's second-largest district an outlier in a state that just hit its lowest public school enrollment in at least a decade.

Only 13 of Maine's 254 districts managed to add students in each of the last three years. Lewiston led them all, gaining 264 students since 2023, more than any other district with at least 500 students. The growth is modest in absolute terms. But in a state losing more than 2,000 students a year, any district moving in the opposite direction demands attention.

A Mill Town That Found a Second Act

The story of Lewiston's enrollment trajectory is inseparable from the city's transformation over the past two decades. In 2001, a Somali refugee family discovered Lewiston's affordable housing and low crime and began spreading word to immigrant networks across the country. What followed was one of the most significant secondary migration events in New England history.

Today, approximately 7,500 immigrants live in Lewiston, a city of roughly 37,000. Somali, Congolese, Sudanese, and other African families have settled in what was once a declining post-industrial city. The Lewiston school district now serves students speaking 42 different languages, with Somali the most common non-English language. The district's student body is 42% Black and 46% white, a demographic profile that would be unremarkable in most American cities but is extraordinary in Maine, where 84.4% of all public school students statewide are white.

The enrollment numbers trace the arc of this transformation. Lewiston peaked at 5,574 students in 2019, lost 489 students through the pandemic years to bottom out at 5,085 in 2023, then reversed course. The 173-student gain in 2025 was Lewiston's largest single-year increase in the dataset.

The Twin City Divergence

The contrast with Auburn^↗ sharpens the picture. The two cities sit on opposite banks of the Androscoggin River, share a metro area, and are often spoken of in the same breath. Their school systems have followed opposite paths.

Auburn enrolled 3,639 students in 2017. By 2024, after seven consecutive years of decline, it had fallen to 3,179, a loss of 460 students (12.6%). Auburn has shown signs of stabilizing in the last two years, adding 63 and 66 students respectively, but it remains 331 students below its 2017 level.

Lewiston, by contrast, is only 149 students (2.7%) below its 2017 mark and closing the gap. The difference between the two cities is not geography, not economics, not school quality ratings. It is immigration. Auburn does not have a large immigrant community. Lewiston does.

Growing Pains Are Real

Lewiston's growth has created a problem most Maine districts would envy: the schools are running out of room. Superintendent Jake Langlais told city councilors in April 2025 that enrollment had surpassed 6,000 students (a figure that includes programs beyond the state's October count), adding roughly 1,000 students in four years. "I'm hopeful it grows more slowly, because if it grows too quickly, we will reach capacity all over the place," Langlais said.

The district purchased a former Central Maine Healthcare building on Main Street and requested $1 million in the city's Capital Improvement Plan to design its conversion into educational space. Mayor Carl Sheline framed the capacity crunch as a sign of vitality: "This is really a good problem to have."

The infrastructure challenge underscores a paradox in Maine's funding formula. Per-pupil funding follows students, so growing districts receive more state aid. But Lewiston's growth comes with disproportionate costs. The district's multilingual education department, led by Director Lysa McLemore, supports students across seven primary languages. The instructional programs these students receive carry higher per-pupil costs than general education, and the gap between state reimbursement and actual cost of multilingual services is a persistent pressure point.

The State Is Going the Other Direction

Lewiston's trajectory is notable precisely because Maine's is so bleak. The state lost 11,994 students between 2017 and 2026, a 6.6% decline to an all-time low of 168,923. The losses are accelerating: 1,307 in 2024, 1,562 in 2025, 2,134 in 2026.

Maine's demographics explain much of it. The state recorded 5,019 more deaths than births in 2025, and its total fertility rate of 1.45 births per woman ranks among the lowest nationally. Any population growth the state experiences comes entirely from migration.

That is precisely what makes Lewiston's story significant at scale. Statewide, Black student enrollment grew 50.3% between 2017 and 2026, from 6,256 to 9,403, driven overwhelmingly by immigrant families in Lewiston and Portland^↗. English learner enrollment grew 54.3% over the same period, from 5,376 to 8,293. These are the fastest-growing segments of Maine's student population, and they are concentrated in a handful of cities.

The January 2026 Disruption

The growth trajectory hit a sudden complication in January 2026 when ICE launched "Operation Catch of the Day" across southern and western Maine, arresting more than 200 people. Across Maine's most diverse districts, absence rates for multilingual students approached or exceeded 50% at the height of the operation, with more than 4,000 students statewide missing school on a single day.

In Lewiston, Superintendent Langlais confirmed that ICE had not conducted enforcement at schools, bus stops, or school events, but acknowledged a rise in absences as fear spread through the community. Mayor Sheline disputed ICE's characterization of the operation as targeting criminals, noting that agents had detained "a Lewiston mother of an autistic son" and "a father of a newborn child."

The enrollment data in this analysis reflects the state's October count, taken months before the ICE operation began. Whether immigration enforcement affects Lewiston's 2027 enrollment count, through families leaving or keeping children home, is the most consequential open question facing the district.

A building on Main Street

The tension between a city running out of classroom space and a state running out of students is the Lewiston story in miniature. The district now accounts for 3.17% of Maine's total enrollment, up from 3.04% in 2017. That share will keep climbing as long as the state shrinks and Lewiston does not. After the January ICE operations, the more urgent question is whether the families who filled those classrooms will still be in Lewiston when the October count arrives.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.