More than 87,000 Lehigh Valley youngsters are heading back to the area’s 17 public school districts this week, part of 1.5 million peers in Pennsylvania’s 500 districts. But statistics from the state Education Department show a trend of declining enrollment as the state’s population stagnates in number but advances in age.

As with all things demographic, the trend does not play out uniformly in all districts and at all age levels. Here is a quick look at which districts are growing and shrinking in the area and around the state.

All numbers are based on annual enrollment reports filed by schools the first week of October. The Morning Call used reports from 2019 (the last pre-pandemic report) through 2024. Enrollment reports are made for each grade level. We gathered grades into four groups to examine in which age group growth — or loss — is taking place most profoundly.

Only five of the area’s 17 public school districts have grown since 2019: Northern Lehigh, Parkland, Nazareth, Catasauqua and Allentown. At the current rate of change, Parkland is on track to gain more than 100 new students per year, the most in the area, while Bethlehem Area School District is set to lose 107 per year, should the trend slope established by the last six enrollment reports continue.

Parkland’s demographic change is a driving force behind the district’s Vision 2030, which calls for renovations at Parkland High School, including a new football stadium, and a major expansion of Orefield Middle School.

As a percentage of 2024 enrollment levels, Saucon Valley and Bangor lost the greatest portion of their students — 2.2% and 1.5% respectively, with Northwestern Lehigh, Salisbury, Wilson and Easton lost more than 1% annually.

The 17 Lehigh Valley districts together lost 332 pupils per year, according to the enrollment data.

But the reports show that growth and loss are happening at different grade levels in each district, although most are seeing their greatest gains (or smallest losses) in grades 9 through 12. The table below highlights the grade group growing fastest or shrinking most slowly.

Similar trends are playing out across Pennsylvania, where grades 9 through 12 are the only ones to show increasing enrollment in the last six years.

The map below shows all the state’s districts with their total enrollment since the October 2019 report, along with rankings and annual change rates, which range from -7.2% in Allegheny County’s Sto-Rox district to an increase of 4.4% per year in Mahanoy Area in Schuylkill County.

The two tables below show the top and bottom 50 districts for enrollment changes. Northern Lehigh and Parkland’s rates are high enough to place both in the top 10% statewide.

The data includes information on 153 taxpayer-funded charter schools educating almost 103,000 children, including a dozen schools in the Lehigh Valley with a combined enrollment of 8,368 students, according to the 2024 report.

The changes in enrollment levels for charters is greater than that of the 499 public school districts reporting data, ranging from a loss of 28% of students in one year, to a gain of 12%, both among Philadelphia’s 80 charters.

The state’s charters are growing at a rate of 0.3% per year, adding about 300 students, compared with the loss of more than 9,000 students per year in the school districts, amounting to a 0.6% decline.

https://www.mcall.com/2025/08/26/back-to-school-time-for-fewer-kids-in-lehigh-valley/