Newton Public Schools’ current kindergarten class is the smallest the city has seen since 1984.

At 664 students, the class size is down from more than 900 in the early 2010s, according to preliminary data shared by Katy Hogue, the district’s chief of data and research, at Monday night’s school committee meeting.

Hogue presented a report on enrollment trends covering the changes from last year to the current school year. As of Oct. 1, the district’s preliminary enrollment is 11,052 students—a decrease of 283 students from last year—compared to an earlier prediction of a decrease by 116 students.

Newton’s high schools and elementary schools saw a decrease in enrollment, while the middle schools saw a slight increase. According to Hogue’s preliminary data, nearly 41% of withdrawals are caused by students leaving for private schools. This value has hovered between 39% and 41% since 2023, suggesting that the decrease in enrollment this year is not due to more students enrolling in private schools, according to the report.

This fall, the district saw an increase in cohort size for grade one, but the increase was lower than the average of the last few years. The actual enrollment for all elementary grades except for fifth grade was below projections made previously.

Grades five and six are often a transitional period during which families may choose to move their children to private schools. In the last three years, the cohort from grade five to six instead grew, but this year the trend has reverted to a decline.

The enrollment difference between Newton North High School and Newton South High School continued to shrink, with North having 142 more students. The difference was 274 students a few years ago.

The numbers shared at Monday’s meeting may shift slightly as data continues to be validated by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Speculation about the future of Newton’s student enrollment was most recently brought up during last spring’s debate about whether or not to close the Ward and Underwood elementary schools.

At a school committee meeting on June 1, Josh Morse, the city’s Chief Operations Officer, warned against consolidating the two schools in expectation of a shrinking student population. He called the predictions of a decline “eerily familiar” given discussions that took place in the 1990s when Newton closed some elementary schools before an unexpected increase in enrollment in the following decades. 

Hogue’s report shows that Underwood experienced a 7.6% drop in enrollment between 2025 and 2026. Ward saw a 8.4% decline in the same period. The school committee ultimately voted against consolidating the two schools earlier this year, per Morse’s recommendations.

Further data on the enrollment decline in favor of private schools, broken down by school, grade and withdrawal reason, will be discussed in the December Enrollment Analysis Report. Superintendent Anna Nolin will present her findings about families who recently pulled their children out of NPS.