A drop in the local birth rate is being felt at the district level, according to Round Rock ISD demographers.
What's happening
In recent years, the number of students enrolled in the district declined from a peak of 50,953 in the 2019-20 school year to 45,952 students in the 2025-26 school year.
Rocky Gardner, a representative of demographic firm Zonda Education, shared projections showing the district’s enrollment could further decline to 40,199 students by the 2035-36 school year. Gardner said that generally, people are having fewer children, which has a direct impact on the state’s attendance-based funding model for school districts.
This is a trend observed across the country, RRISD Chief of Schools Natalie Nichols said ahead of the 2026-27 school year, and not indicative of parent dissatisfaction with public education.
Facing additional budget constraints, the district is planning programmatic efficiencies if this enrollment decline bears out.
The framework
Nichols said her staff is constantly working to increase the district’s efficiency. In practice, this means finding ways to do more with fewer people, and often involves streamlining processes and eliminating redundancies, she said.
“Regardless of the enrollment, we don't believe in offering less,” Nichols said. “Now, it's a matter of how we really meet everyone's needs.”
She clarified that while RRISD is actively finding ways to reduce the cost of its programming, it will not reduce the offerings that have brought new students to the district. Programs such as orchestra, robotics, and career and technical education are frequently cited as drawing families to move to the area or transfer their children into the district, she said.
Since the 2022-23 school year, the district has accepted out-of-district students at select campuses with available capacity. In the 2025-26 school year, the district had over 1,600 students enrolled who were zoned for other school districts.
The plan
So far, RRISD has been able to avoid layoffs by allowing vacancies to go unfilled or reassigning teachers to other positions as needed.
Nichols said the district’s continued search for efficiencies will include staffing adjustments to allocate teachers and staff to meet needs without overages as well as consolidating roles where appropriate. As of August, the district is projecting a balanced budget for the 2026-27 financial year.
Should enrollment continue to decline, Nichols said downsizing in staffing is not only possible, but probable.
“People have to know what we're doing and why we're doing it, and that we have their best interest and the best interests of their students at heart,” Nichols said.
