116 Montana Districts Hit Record-Low Enrollment

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In 2023, 25 Montana school districts sat at their all-time low enrollment. Three years later, that number has more than quadrupled to 116. Livingston Elem^↗, a district that enrolled 436 students a decade ago, is down to 312 -- a 28.4% loss that has forced the kind of staffing arithmetic where every retirement becomes a question of whether to fill the position at all.

Livingston is not an outlier. One hundred sixteen of Montana's 390 districts, 29.7%, are at their lowest enrollment ever recorded in 2026. The list includes every one of the state's five largest elementary systems: Billings Elem^↗, Great Falls Elem^↗, Missoula Elem^↗, Helena Elem^↗, and Butte Elem^↗. Together those five districts serve 30,037 students, 21.1% of statewide enrollment, and all five hit their floor simultaneously.

The spike is recent

For most of the nine-year dataset, the number of districts at their all-time low hovered between 25 and 50 in any given year. In 2023, just 25 districts sat at record lows. Three years later that number has more than quadrupled.

The acceleration tracks the statewide trajectory. Montana peaked at 150,573 students in 2023, then lost 8,502 over three years, falling to 142,071, the lowest point in the dataset. The 2025 drop of 4,068 was the largest non-COVID decline on record. When the state sheds students that fast, the damage spreads: 106 districts set new record lows in 2026 alone.

Where the losses concentrate

The 116 districts at record lows collectively enroll 60,383 students, 42.5% of the state's total. These are not marginal rural outposts. The median district at its all-time low enrolls 131 students, slightly larger than the statewide median of 110.

Billings Elem has lost 1,000 students since its 2020 peak, an 8.5% decline. Missoula Elem is down 757 from its peak (13.2%), Great Falls Elem 614 (8.4%), and Helena Elem 504 (9.4%). In percentage terms, smaller districts have been hit harder: Livingston Elem^↗ has lost 28.4% of its peak enrollment, Laurel Elem^↗ 23.5%, and Hardin Elem^↗ 22.0%.

In Missoula, the enrollment math has already turned into staffing math. The district cut upwards of 100 positions in early 2024 to close an $8 million gap driven partly by 500 fewer elementary students since 2018, which Superintendent Micah Hill estimated at $3.4 million in lost state aid.

"Hard for me not to feel emotional about it. I don't have the magic wand or anything that's going to make these challenges just go away." -- Micah Hill, Missoula County Public Schools Superintendent, Montana Free Press, March 2024

Elementary districts are bearing the brunt

Montana's unusual split-district structure, where many communities run separate elementary and high school systems, makes the pattern visible in a way other states' data does not. Of 224 elementary districts, 72 (32.1%) are at all-time lows. Among 99 high school districts, 22 (22.2%) are at their floor. K-12 unified districts fall in between at 33.3%.

The gap makes structural sense. Montana's birth rate has been declining for years, and elementary districts feel those smaller kindergarten cohorts first. High school districts inherit the larger cohorts that entered the pipeline a decade ago. The split-district structure turns a single demographic wave into a visible lag: elementary districts hit bottom while high school districts hold steady or, in some cases, grow.

That lag explains why 48 districts, 12.3%, are at all-time highs. Bozeman H S leads at 2,844 students, having grown every year since 2018. Corvallis K-12, Whitefish H S, and Browning H S are also at peaks. But for elementary feeders in the same communities, the trajectory is already pointing down.

The funding formula amplifies the decline

Montana ties 81.3% of school funding to student enrollment through its ANB (Average Number Belonging) formula. Every lost student costs a district roughly $4,900 at the elementary level and $6,300 at the high school level, according to Flathead Beacon's analysis of per-pupil funding. For Billings Elem, a loss of 1,000 students represents approximately $4.9 million in reduced state aid, enough to trigger school closures.

At the same time, districts' ability to make up the difference through local levies is eroding. Lance Melton, executive director of the Montana School Boards Association, told Montana Free Press that passage rates have collapsed: in 2006, nearly all of 125 proposed levies passed. By 2025, districts proposed roughly half that number and voters rejected nearly half.

"We're down to a smidgeon here -- we're down to the point of 'why are people running levies any more?'" -- Lance Melton, Montana School Boards Association, Montana Free Press, February 2026

Helena Superintendent Rex Weltz described the situation as a tipping point: "We've been able to make ends meet for years under the formula. We're at a tipping point where we're no longer able to do that."

Housing costs are part of the mechanism, not all of it

Two forces are plausibly driving the enrollment decline, and they reinforce each other.

The first is demographic. The share of Montana's population that is school-aged has dropped from roughly 20% in the early 1990s to about 15%, a structural shift that no policy can quickly reverse. Fewer children are being born, and the cohorts entering kindergarten are smaller than those graduating from 12th grade.

The second is housing affordability. In Missoula, Bozeman, and Kalispell, administrators have pointed to steep home prices as a barrier for young families. Missoula's Superintendent Hill specifically cited families being priced out of their communities. The district's kindergarten enrollment fell to 457 in fall 2025, down from over 500 the prior year. Hill noted: "As those students matriculate through, the number of teachers needed in fifth grade is going to go down."

Distinguishing between these two forces matters for policy. Birth rate decline affects all districts. Housing affordability concentrates its effects in the communities that have grown most expensive. Belgrade Elem, in fast-growing Gallatin County adjacent to Bozeman, is at its all-time low despite surrounding population growth, down 14.4% from its peak, a signal that the families moving in may not have school-aged children or may be priced into districts where they do not enroll.

What to watch next

The 2025 Legislature enacted changes to public school funding flows, including Gov. Gianforte's $100 million investment in starting teacher pay. Whether that investment can stabilize staffing in districts losing students and levy revenue simultaneously is an open question.

A state-appointed Montana School Funding Commission is developing recommendations for the 2027 Legislature. The fundamental tension it faces: 116 districts are at record lows and losing the ANB revenue that pays for their teachers, while the levy system that once supplemented state funding is failing at rates not seen in two decades. Great Falls, which carries a $2.5 million shortfall, has begun offering an online learning platform to recapture students who left for homeschooling or private schools during the pandemic. So far, the platform has not reversed the district's trajectory. Great Falls Elem lost another 197 students in 2026.

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