Years before Blueprint requirements dominated concerns in Carroll Schools, an enrollment decline startled the Carroll County community. Ten years ago, a declining student population meant the permanent closure of North Carroll High School, New Windsor Middle School and Charles Carroll Elementary at the end of the 2015-2016 school year.
Ten years later, the Carroll County Board of Education is worried about another enrollment decline. In recent meetings, the board recalls the dark period of 2009 to 2019 and the budget issues that led to major cuts in the public school system.
On Sept. 30, 2025, a CCPS enrollment count showed a 437-student drop — from 25,636 in fall of 2024 to 25,199 at the start of this school year. At recent Carroll County Board of Education budget work sessions, board members reviewed a list of ways to further shrink Carroll Schools’ fiscal 2027 expenses.
In December, Superintendent Cynthia McCabe described the cuts CCPS made “deeply and drastically” as result of that challenging decade. The Carroll County school system saw 11 years of enrollment decline in a row, from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2018.
At the beginning of the decline, in the 2006-07 school year, 28,319 students were enrolled in CCPS. In the 2016-17 school year, the last consecutive year of enrollment decline, the student count reached only 24,860, according to state-verified enrollment counts from CCPS staff.
Carroll Schools Facilities Planner William Caine said the period of decline wasn’t caused by students leaving the school system. “It’s really just that the older kids are graduating. And if they’re not replaced with the same size class, then you’re going to see some decline,” Caine said.
Caine explained: “If there’s 2,000 seniors graduating, if you don’t have 2,000 kindergartners coming in to replace them, say you only have 1,500 kindergartners, well, you’re going to automatically lose 500 students just because of that.”
The Carroll County Public Schools Educational Facilities Master Plan for 2025-34 offers context for the roughly 10-year period of decline.
Carroll County experienced rapid population growth from 1950 to 2010, but slowed from 2007 through 2016 because fewer homes were built amid the 2008 recession and housing market decline, according to the master plan. “The amount of new home construction in the county really dropped off over the last 20 years,” Caine said.
Census data from 2020 shows that Carroll County saw only a small population growth over the past two decades.
“The 3.4% increase in population between 2010 to 2020 is the slowest rate of growth in almost a century,” the master plan says.
Additionally, the plan notes Carroll County’s aging population: “There were several years between 2007 and 2016 when there were more people moving out of Carroll than moving in.”
In the 2005-06 school year, the year before the decade-long period of enrollment decline, CCPS enrolled 28,491 students.
Twenty years later, in the 2025-26 school year, the total number of students enrolled in CCPS this school year is 25,199.
“Between being born and showing up in kindergarten five years later, some students are not with us,” Jon O’Neal, assistant superintendent of operations for CCPS, said in November. He added, “the families have either exited Carroll County or they made a different choice.”
Enrollment decline is a statewide issue. According to data from the Maryland State Board of Education, every school system in the state — with the exception of Kent County — experienced an enrollment decline from the 2024-25 school year to the 2025-26 school year. Carroll County had the eighth-largest enrollment change in the state.
The COVID-19 pandemic major led to a major drop in enrollment with a state-verified 2020 count showing a 949 student decline. “We kind of had a blip because of COVID, but then we came back and we were kind of on that same path, enrollment-wise,” Caine said, adding, “The last two years, that’s kind of changed.”
The past two decades of enrollment and budget numbers show that CCPS has survived drastic enrollment decline in the past, but major cuts were made as a result. Past cuts have already made the CCPS budget exceptionally lean, setting up future cuts to be potentially more painful.
McCabe said in December that she views the current situation as more dire than the 2009-to-2019 era of cuts. Then, “there were some things that we were able to cut.” Today, “none of those cuts are things that any of us think are good for students or good for families,” she said.
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