School leaders should have a more visible role in the housing conversation happening in their communities.
Not because superintendents should become developers or school boards should take over zoning. But because declining enrollment is one of the biggest challenges facing Upstate New York’s districts. And the lack of places for families to live can’t be someone else’s problem forever.
We all have a role in this thing.
When I wrote last month about avoiding school closures, housing was at the center of the argument. Communities need to build more of it, make ordinary projects easier to approve, and give people a realistic opportunity to move in or stay. The next step is identifying who needs to help make that happen.
School leaders belong near the front of that effort. They see smaller classes moving through their buildings, plan staffing around them, and explain the consequences to taxpayers. They also have a direct interest in whether the next generation of parents can afford to live within their district’s boundaries.
The enrollment data show why this can’t be treated as a problem affecting only a handful of rural schools. Across the 52 counties I’m using as Upstate — outside New York City, Long Island, Westchester, Rockland and Putnam — the file includes 482 districts operating complete K-12 programs. Of the 473 with comparable records going back to 1995-96, 457 lost students. Their combined enrollment fell 26.8%, or about 300,000 students.
More than half of the included districts now educate fewer than 1,000 students across all 13 grades. The latest figures are preliminary 2025-26 counts, not a headcount taken this fall, and the comparison doesn’t include districts that send older students elsewhere rather than operate a complete K-12 program.
Those numbers don’t tell us every reason enrollment changed. Birth rates, employment, household turnover and decisions about where children attend school all matter. But housing is one of the most direct levers local communities can pull. A family attracted by a good school still needs a home it can find and afford.
Victor offers a useful example. Its K-12 enrollment grew from 2,993 to 4,028 over 30 years, while nearby Honeoye fell from 1,101 to 483. Victor’s growth didn’t happen apart from residential development. A 2012 socioeconomic analysis prepared for the town’s comprehensive plan documented that nearly half its housing stock had been built since 1990, primarily through subdivisions.
The school district extends beyond the town, and those documents don’t calculate how much of its enrollment growth each factor caused. Still, the practical connection is hard to miss: Homebuilding gave additional households somewhere to live. The community’s appeal and its housing supply worked together.
Victor has also lost students over the last decade. That’s an important reminder that building homes doesn’t guarantee enrollment will rise indefinitely. It also isn’t a reason to dismiss the role housing played in making growth possible.
Tompkins County adds another piece to this argument. Its latest housing snapshot, presented to legislators in February, describes a relatively stable population but an increasing number of households. A couple weeks ago I talked with David West, who heads up the county’s housing efforts, who confirmed as much. It also shows that housing need has grown faster than supply and rents have increased faster than incomes.
It means a community can need more homes without adding more people. Smaller households occupy more units, leaving population stability a poor excuse for doing nothing at all.
The six Tompkins districts in this analysis all have fewer students than they did 30 years ago. Their trajectories differ, but the county isn’t proof that building housing automatically reverses enrollment decline. It illustrates why counting residents alone doesn’t tell us whether there’s room for another family — or whether the families already working there can afford to stay.
This is where school leaders can make a meaningful contribution.
Instead of entering the development conversation only to estimate how many children a proposal might add, they should help communities understand the cost of continuing to lose them.
A superintendent explaining enrollment projections at a town meeting could connect them to the housing pipeline: What’s being proposed, what can reasonably be built and what range of students those homes might bring. School boards could invite municipal officials and housing planners into the same discussion, rather than allowing school planning and community planning to proceed on separate tracks.
Districts should also make their actual capacity understandable. A lower district-wide headcount doesn’t necessarily mean room in every grade, building, or program. Clear information about classrooms, transportation, and staffing would help local officials plan growth without relying on either exaggerated fears of overcrowding or unsupported promises of spare capacity.
Most importantly, school leaders should be willing to support changes that make more housing possible. That can mean publicly backing clearer approval rules, a broader range of housing types and infrastructure investments that allow homes to be built. They don’t need to endorse every application to say that their district’s future requires more opportunities for people to live there.
The kind of housing matters. Expensive subdivisions alone won’t accommodate every young parent, teacher or school employee. Communities need rental homes, modest ownership options and different sizes of housing for different stages of life. Older residents who want to downsize need choices, too; allowing them to move locally can make existing homes available without asking them to leave their community.
There are legitimate objections. New homes can require sewer upgrades, longer bus routes, or additional classrooms. Some districts are already dealing with crowded buildings. Development costs money, and there are places where construction costs or limited infrastructure make a project difficult even with supportive zoning.
School officials are responsible for protecting students and managing resources. Asking them to join the pro-housing conversation shouldn’t mean asking them to ignore those responsibilities. It should mean bringing the information needed to build responsibly, including realistic timelines and the cost of serving additional students. A project’s tax revenue and school costs need to be evaluated, not assumed to cancel each other out.
The alternative has costs as well. A district can lose children from several grades without losing enough from any one grade to eliminate a class. Buildings, specialized services and transportation don’t shrink neatly with headcount. Housing isn’t an instant budget fix, but continued decline isn’t a financially neutral choice.
Students already in school still need a good education while communities pursue growth. Sharing programs, improving high-school opportunities, and using regional resources remain part of that work. This month we’ll take a look at those choices and their limits. They should accompany a housing strategy, not become a substitute for one.
And to be clear, my argument isn’t that every district can become Victor. It’s that school leaders should help their communities make growth possible, then plan honestly for what comes next.
If we want another generation of families in our schools, we need to give them somewhere to live. The people responsible for those schools should be among the strongest voices helping that happen.
Thanks for reading In Focus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
