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About 21,000 fewer students attend Houston ISD than when Texas seized control in 2023, a slide that has cost the district roughly $190 million in state aid, according to a Texas Tribune analysis.
- In 2025-26, HISD's immigrant enrollment fell by nearly 4,000 (22%) and Hispanic enrollment slid 6% during the federal immigration crackdown. The district expects to lose about 4,000 more students this year.
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Immigration is only part of the picture: the sharpest losses hit campuses running Superintendent Mike Miles' New Education System, and the district has burned through nearly $450 million in reserves.
Texas' largest school district is losing children through two doors at the same time. Some immigrant families, shaken by a surge in federal enforcement, have stopped sending their kids to class. Other parents have left because they reject the state-imposed overhaul of their schools. Since Texas distributes most school aid according to attendance, both departures drain the same account, and that account will eventually be handed back to Houston's elected trustees.
How Many Students Houston ISD Has Lost
The state replaced HISD's elected board and superintendent with Miles and a board of managers in June 2023. Since then, enrollment has dropped by about 21,000, the Tribune reported on Sept. 21. The losses have grown every year: roughly 5,800 students in the first year of state control, around 7,400 in the second and close to 8,000 in 2025-26.
The district's preliminary count for last school year was higher. Its Oct. 31 submission showed a decline of more than 8,300 students, or 4.7%, according to the Houston Chronicle, which noted that HISD could revise the numbers until mid-January.
The Immigration Factor in the Numbers
Texas classifies a student as an "immigrant" when the child was born outside the U.S. and has spent no more than three full academic years in American schools. By that yardstick, HISD's immigrant population topped 17,500 in 2024-25 and then shrank by nearly 4,000, about 22%, in 2025-26. It was the group's first year-over-year decline since the pandemic, the Chronicle found in records it obtained.
Enrollment fell across all of HISD's largest racial and ethnic groups, but not evenly. Hispanic enrollment dropped 6%, while the district's Black and Asian populations each declined 4%, per the Chronicle's breakdown. The two categories overlap but are not the same: many Hispanic students were born in the U.S., and HISD's immigrant students come from many countries.
Houston is not an outlier. School systems across the metro area collectively lost more than 8,000 immigrant students last year, with Humble ISD shedding a quarter of that population, based on Texas Education Agency data reviewed by the Chronicle.
Statewide, public school enrollment fell by roughly 76,000 students in 2025-26, the first drop outside the pandemic in close to 40 years. Hispanic children made up 81% of that loss, or 61,781 students, according to a Texas 2036 report covered by the Tribune. The research group said it could not measure how much stepped-up immigration enforcement contributed, and Education Commissioner Mike Morath told lawmakers the exact cause remained unclear.
What the Takeover Has to Do With It
Blaming the enrollment slide on immigration alone would miss a large part of the story. The Tribune's investigation found the steepest drops at the roughly 130 campuses operating under Miles' New Education System, or NES, while charter enrollment inside HISD's boundaries climbed. Houston also lost students faster than any comparable urban district in Texas.
The Chronicle's own campus-level review points the same way: in 2025-26, NES schools lost an average of 9.7% of their students, compared with about 1.2% at non-NES campuses, the paper reported. Miles has acknowledged that the takeover contributed to the losses, though he described its role to the Tribune as minor.
Why Every Empty Seat Costs Money
HISD collects at least $6,160 in state money for each student, the Chronicle reported, while the Defender Network cites the state's $6,215 basic allotment. For the current year, the district estimates that the projected loss of about 4,000 students will reduce revenue by roughly $50 million, according to its preliminary budget.
Costs do not fall at the same pace. Jonathan Travers, CEO of Education Resource Strategies, told the Tribune that removing one child from a classroom saves little until the class itself can be combined with another, since the teacher, building and bus still have to be paid for.
The Price Tag of the New Education System
The reform model is expensive to run. In 2026, HISD budgeted about $8,500 per student for roughly 63,000 NES students, compared with $6,300 for students at other campuses, the Tribune found. The adopted plan for 2026-27 keeps a similar gap, projecting $8,459 per NES student versus about $6,265 elsewhere, the Defender reported.
To cover that difference, the district has cut deeply in other areas:
- About 1,500 central-office jobs eliminated
- More than 200 wraparound specialists laid off; they helped students in poverty get access to food and health care
- 85 bus routes discontinued
- A $311 million shortfall in 2024-25, HISD's first budget deficit in a decade
HISD also drew down nearly $450 million from its savings during Miles' first years. Reserves that once could fund seven months of operations covered about three after 2024-25, only slightly above the 2.5-month cushion the state considers healthy.
What Miles Says About the Decline
At a May budget workshop, Miles attributed the expected 4,000-student drop in part to "immigration-related policies" along with other factors. He has defended tapping reserves to pay recurring costs and argues that stronger academic ratings will eventually lure families back.
The district's projections have missed before. HISD planned for a loss of about 6,700 students in 2025-26, but the actual decline landed between roughly 8,000 and 8,300, depending on the count. This fall also brings a new variable: the state's education savings account program, which is funding private-school and homeschool costs for the first time in 2026-27 and awarded tens of thousands of accounts this spring.
When Elected Trustees Take Back Control
The timing of the handover is starting to come into focus. In August, Morath said the intervention could wrap up "relatively soon," with special education compliance the main unfinished requirement. Miles has said the formal exit could follow the 2026-27 school year, after which appointed managers would be replaced by elected trustees gradually over about three years, the Chronicle reported. Whoever leads the board then will inherit a smaller student body and a far thinner financial cushion.
What to Watch Next
The state's late-October enrollment snapshot will set HISD's official 2026-27 count. At the start of classes, the district expected a decline of about 2.4%, with a little over 160,000 students returning, ABC13 reported. The October data, and the demographic breakdowns released later, will show whether Hispanic and immigrant losses eased or deepened.
For parent Heather Golden, whose children graduated from HISD, the district's finances already look grim. "It feels a little bit like a death spiral right now," she told the Tribune.
