In this series: West Virginia 2025-26 Enrollment.

The state's current enrollment panel shows 234,957 public school students in 2025-26, down 6,067 from 2024-25 — a 2.5% decline.

The West Virginia Department of Education's 2025-26 enrollment data show that this was the largest annual loss outside 2021 in the 2011-2026 series. The 2021 loss was 9,276 students; the 2025-26 loss ranks second across the full series. The state is now 47,352 students below its 2013 peak of 282,309 — a 16.8% decline — and 2025-26 is a new low for the panel.

What the numbers open up

The enrollment data covers all 55 county school districts, from Kanawha County's 22,132 students down to Gilmer County's 712. Over the coming weeks, The WVEdTribune will unpack it in a series of data-driven articles. Here is what the current panel shows.

Kanawha County has lost 6,326 students. The state capital's school system dropped to 22,132 students, down from 28,458 in 2011. Kanawha lost 969 students in a single year — a 4.2% decline — and its 2026 enrollment is a series low.

48 of 55 counties just hit all-time lows. This is not a story about a few struggling districts dragging down a state average. The seven county systems above their historical floors are Berkeley, Doddridge, Hampshire, Hardy, Mineral, Monongalia and Tyler.

By the numbers: 234,957 students statewide in 2025-26 — down 6,067 from the prior year, a 2.5% decline, the largest non-pandemic loss in the 2011-2026 series, and a new all-time low.

The threads we are following

One in five students receives special education. West Virginia's reported special education rate has climbed from 15.5% in 2011 to 20.8% in 2026, the highest in the series. Three county systems exceed 26% in the current published counts.

Only two counties are above their 2020 enrollment. Of 55 county school systems, just Berkeley and Doddridge have more students in 2026 than in 2020. The other systems are a combined 31,153 students below their 2020 enrollment.

What comes next

Each of these threads will get its own article with charts, county-level breakdowns, and context. New articles publish Mondays. The first deep dive, next week, examines how the Hope Scholarship voucher program is accelerating the exodus from public schools.

The enrollment figures come from the West Virginia Department of Education data center. The data covers headcount enrollment for all 55 county school districts statewide. This correction updates the figures to the current 2011-2026 package snapshot and removes unsupported voucher, funding-formula and projected-trend claims from the original version.

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