Colstrip Lost One in Five Students as Its Power Plant Shrank

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In 2016, the Colstrip Generating Station employed roughly 770 of the town's 2,300 residents and distributed about $50 million annually in wages. Colstrip's median household income was $84,145, nearly double Montana's statewide median. Families sent their children to schools funded in part by $14.2 million in annual property tax revenue from the plant itself.

Then the plant started shrinking. Units 1 and 2 shut down in January 2020, eliminating roughly 700 megawatts of capacity. The enrollment data traces what happened next: Colstrip Elem and Colstrip H S, the two districts serving this southeastern Montana coal town, have gone from a combined 577 students in 2017-18 to 463 in 2025-26. That is a loss of 114 students, or 19.8%, a rate of decline 6.2 times the statewide average of 3.2%.

Before and after the shutdown

The timing is striking. In the two years before the unit closures, combined Colstrip enrollment actually grew, rising from 577 to 589 between 2017-18 and 2019-20. The town was bracing for the shutdown but hadn't yet absorbed it.

Every year since has brought losses. Combined enrollment dropped 29 in 2020-21, 18 in 2021-22, 26 in 2022-23, eight in 2023-24, 17 in 2024-25, and 28 in 2025-26. The post-closure total: 126 students gone, a 21.4% decline from the 2019-20 figure. An average of 21 students per year, in a system that started with fewer than 600.

The single green bar on that chart, the 50-student gain in 2019-20, is the only year in the nine-year dataset when Colstrip gained students.

The elementary is emptying faster

The decline has not hit both levels equally. Colstrip Elem has been in an unbroken six-year decline streak, losing students every year from 2020-21 through 2025-26. It enrolled 423 students at its 2019-20 peak and 313 in 2025-26, a drop of 110, or 26.0%. The worst single year was 2022-23, when 31 students vanished.

Colstrip H S, by contrast, has held between 146 and 166 students for most of the period, bouncing slightly up and down. Its 2025-26 enrollment of 150 is 18.0% below its 2017-18 level of 183, but the trajectory is flatter. The high school's relative stability reflects a lag: the students leaving the elementary pipeline have not yet aged into 9th grade in full force. When they do, the high school will feel it.

A company town's arithmetic

Colstrip was built for coal. The Northern Pacific Railway established it in 1924 as a company town to mine coal for steam locomotives, and it was reborn in the 1970s around the generating station, which at its peak operated four units totaling over 2,000 megawatts of coal-fired capacity. The Rosebud Mine, directly adjacent, supplied the fuel.

The community's economic dependence is nearly total. Rosebud County, where Colstrip sits, has seen its population fall from 9,233 in the 2010 census to 8,329 in 2020, a 9.8% decline. One of every two jobs in the county was associated with coal development as recently as the early 2000s, and two of every three wage dollars came from coal mining.

What makes the enrollment story more complicated is that Units 3 and 4, each with 778 megawatts of capacity, are still operating. NorthWestern Energy acquired majority ownership in January 2026, purchasing Puget Sound Energy's and Avista's shares for $0, and now holds 55% of the remaining plant. The company calls Colstrip "a dependable bridge to a cleaner energy future." But half the generating capacity is already gone, and the families attached to the first two units are gone with it.

Colstrip against the state

Indexed to a common 2018 baseline, Colstrip's divergence from the statewide trend is visible and widening. Montana as a whole has lost 3.2% of its enrollment since 2017-18. Colstrip has lost six times that.

Among Montana districts with at least 100 students in 2017-18, Colstrip Elem's 20.6% decline ranks in the top 15% statewide. The districts that lost more are overwhelmingly small rural systems with fewer than 200 students, places where a few families moving can swing percentages by double digits. Colstrip is larger and more stable by Montana standards, which makes its rate of loss harder to dismiss as statistical noise.

Neighboring Forsyth, about 35 miles west on Interstate 94, shows a parallel pattern. Forsyth Elem fell from 232 to 186 students over the same period, a 19.8% decline. Forsyth's economy is also tied to coal and the Rosebud Mine. Together, the two towns account for a corridor of decline across eastern Montana that no other industry has stepped in to replace.

Who stayed, who left

The demographic data reveals which families departed. White enrollment in the combined Colstrip districts fell from 299 to 223, a loss of 76 students, or 25.4%. Native American enrollment, which reflects Colstrip's proximity to the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, declined from 203 to 147, a loss of 56 students, or 27.6%.

Hispanic enrollment is the only group that grew, rising from 31 to 44 students, though it remains a small share at 9.5%. The overall demographic composition has shifted modestly: white students made up 51.8% of enrollment in 2017-18 and 48.2% in 2025-26, while Native American students went from 35.2% to 31.7%.

The Native American decline tells a different story. These are not plant workers' children in the typical sense. The Northern Cheyenne Reservation borders Colstrip, and many reservation families have long sent children to Colstrip schools. Their departure may reflect a different set of pressures: declining reservation population, transfers to tribal schools, or families relocating entirely.

The tax base paradox

Colstrip's schools exist in a funding environment that most Montana districts would envy. Because the power plant, even at half its former capacity, represents an enormous local property tax base, Colstrip's school districts can raise more revenue per student than almost any non-resort district in the state. Under Montana's school funding formula, districts with large industrial tax bases collect more money while charging individual taxpayers less. Colstrip does not need state equalization aid to fill its budget.

But enrollment drives the state funding formula's entitlements, calculated through the Average Number Belonging (ANB) metric. Fewer students means a lower ANB, which means lower maximum budget authority. A district can be property-rich and still face pressure if the student count that determines its spending ceiling keeps falling.

Colstrip voters, for their part, have passed every proposed school levy for at least 14 years. Superintendent Bob Lewandowski told Prairie Populist in 2019 that the district would not compromise on educational quality: "We refuse to accept anything less than the educational quality that we offer now."

Diversification has not replaced families

The Southeastern Montana Development Corporation released an economic diversification strategy in 2017 with five major projects: broadband expansion, an energy park, a business innovation center, a site-selector tool, and a regional marketing campaign to attract remote workers. The marketing campaign has brought some new residents.

But remote workers without school-age children do not fill classrooms. Colstrip's enrollment decline suggests that the families who left, the ones with children in Pine Butte Elementary and Frank Brattin Middle School, have not been replaced at the same rate. The diversification strategy may stabilize the town's population. It has not stabilized the schools.

What the pipeline signals

The elementary's six consecutive years of decline are a forecast. The 313 students in Colstrip Elem today are the high school's enrollment five to eight years from now. If the elementary stabilizes at its current level, the high school will still shrink as the larger cohorts from the pre-closure era age out and smaller ones replace them.

Whether the elementary stabilizes depends almost entirely on what happens to Units 3 and 4. NorthWestern Energy's decision to acquire majority control and characterize the plant as a "bridge" buys time, but every co-owner exit and every megawatt transferred reshuffles the workforce. The 2025-26 school year saw Colstrip lose 28 combined students, the second-worst year in the dataset. The bridge, for now, is still narrowing.

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

Colstrip Elem - EdTribune MT - Montana Education Data