Kelly Gonez, a longtime school board member in the Los Angeles Unified School District, says public school enrollment declines worsened after ICE raids escalated in the city in 2025. District officials say low birth rates and the loss of immigrant children in classrooms mean school campuses will likely have to close. Carlos Jaramillo for NPR hide caption

Carlos Jaramillo for NPR

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LOS ANGELES — Long before the Trump administration started deporting hundreds of thousands of immigrants, many with school-age children, public schools nationwide faced a massive and accelerating drop in student enrollment caused mostly by shrinking families.

"Birth rates here in Los Angeles County have been declining for decades, which means fewer children enrolled in our schools," said Kelly Gonez, a board member in the LA Unified School District (LAUSD), the second largest in the country, which lost more than 300,000 students over the last two decades.

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