The additional decline in student numbers has financial consequences for the district.
By Rhatia Murphy
Original Air Date: September 22 2026
Host: Sarasota County Schools entered this school year expecting enrollment to continue falling. But the decline has exceeded the district’s forecast. Rhatia Murphy reports.
Terry Connor
Rhatia Murphy: Superintendent Terry Connor told School Board members Sept. 15 that the district had projected a decline of roughly 650 students. Comparing last year’s January Survey 3 count with current enrollment, Connor said the district is down about 743 students.
School Board member Liz Barker told WSLR the larger drop may be due not just to students shifting from public to other school options, but to parents taking vouchers for their kindergarteners.
Liz Barker
Liz Barker: As opposed to seeing this mass exodus of students coming out, we already know that the majority of students taking that voucher had never attended a public school, but now we’re also seeing those kindergarteners who maybe had never intended to enter public school or perhaps had, but now they are taking a voucher. That is also a piece of the puzzle. So I think it’s a little more complicated than just talking about exiting students. We’re also talking about a lack of entering students.
RM: The enrollment drop has financial consequences.
Florida public schools receive funding based in part on student enrollment. And Sarasota had already begun reducing its workforce before the new numbers came in.
Earlier this year, the district identified 136 teaching positions for reduction or reassignment. Connor said the district had to bring staffing back in line with enrollment after years of declining student numbers and the expiration of temporary federal pandemic relief funds.
At the time, Connor said about 85% of the district’s spending was tied to staffing.
Liz Barker:
LB: We used to have a dedicated orchestra program that now covers orchestra and band, so you’re beginning to see the programs that our students and families value begin to stretch and be less robust than we would like.
RM: But the decline isn’t simply a budget story. Sarasota County Schools is competing for students in a very different education market. Families now have expanded access to state-funded scholarships for private education, along with charter schools, homeschooling and other alternatives to traditional district schools.
The district’s newly approved budget shows how that shift is playing out. It projects 720 more students in charter schools and an increase of 588 in state scholarship enrollment this year, while enrollment in district-operated schools falls by 559. Those are annual budget projections, separate from the five-day count Connor reported. The scholarship numbers are funding estimates rather than actual student head counts.
District enrollment projections …
… as predicted in the current budget.
The district is responding with what it calls its Future Focused Strategic Initiative. The plan includes converting some elementary schools into K-through-8 campuses and introducing specialized programs designed in part to attract and retain families.
Brookside Middle School, for example, has begun its transformation into the Gulf Coast Academy of Innovation and Technology, with programs in areas including artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, robotics and game development.
Four elementary schools with declining enrollment are also being converted into K-through-8 schools over several years.
The district says the strategy is also about keeping underused school buildings under local control.
Changes in state law allow charter operators to seek space in underused public-school campuses. Sarasota’s own Future Focused plan says keeping schools full and offering programs families want can help protect those facilities from outside co-location.
Sarasota High classroom
And despite the enrollment problems, Sarasota continues to post strong academic results. The district earned an A rating from the state for the 23rd consecutive year. All of its traditional district-managed schools received either an A or B, and 35 received A grades.
Those results were part of Superintendent Connor’s annual evaluation at the same September 15 meeting. All five School Board members rated Connor in one of the district’s two highest performance categories, which delivered him a $30,000 bonus.
So the district begins the 2026-27 school year in an unusual position: Its academic performance remains strong, while the number of students it serves continues to fall faster than administrators anticipated.
For Sarasota County Schools, the challenge now is not only educating the students it has. It’s convincing more families to choose its schools.
For WSLR News, I’m Rhatia Murphy.
WSLR News aims to keep the local community informed with our 1/2 hour local news show, quarterly newspaper and social media feeds. The local news broadcast airs on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6pm.