July 2026

Every August, charter school leaders face the same tension: expenses are due, and state funding hasn’t arrived yet. This year, that pressure is showing up in the data. Here’s a look at what’s happening in key funding states — and what it means heading into the school year.

California: Enrollment is shrinking — and per-pupil funding with it

California K-12 enrollment posted its largest decline since the pandemic this school year — down 1.3%, with losses concentrated in the state’s largest counties. For charter schools competing for a smaller pool of students, that means tighter per-pupil revenue and more pressure to operate lean heading into the fall.

Arizona: A $206 million state shortfall delayed school funding

In 2025, Arizona schools and charters faced delayed state funding disbursements after a $206 million state budget shortfall — driven largely by ESA program overruns. When the state runs short, the funding timeline slips. The bills don’t.

Ohio: Charter schools receive 23% less per pupil than district schools

Even after recent funding increases, Ohio charter schools receive about 23% less per-pupil funding than their local district counterparts — and the latest state budget cut the charter equity supplement. That gap doesn’t close on its own, and it compounds over time.

Minnesota: Nine charter schools closed in 2024 — the most since 1996

Minnesota charter schools are already operating with 30% less funding than their traditional public school counterparts. In 2024, nine closed — the most in the state’s charter history. For schools still standing, cash flow stability is increasingly what separates the ones that make it from the ones that don’t.

Indiana: Indianapolis charter enrollment dropped 740 students in one year

Indianapolis charter schools saw their largest year-over-year enrollment drop in at least seven years in 2025-26 — down 740 students. That kind of shift hits per-pupil revenue hard and fast. Schools that have working capital in place can absorb it. Schools that don’t often can’t.

South Carolina: Charter schools operate on $3,500 less per student than district schools

South Carolina brick-and-mortar charter schools receive 27% less funding per student than traditional district schools — a gap of more than $3,500 per pupil annually — with no local tax revenue to make up the difference. That’s a tight margin to operate on, especially when funding timing doesn’t line up with expenses.

The common thread

Whether it’s enrollment decline, delayed disbursements, or structural funding gaps, charter schools across the country are heading into this school year with less financial cushion than they’d like. Working capital isn’t a last resort — it’s how schools stay operationally stable when the funding environment works against them.

On June 16, 2026, DuBois Integrity Academy marked a milestone a decade in the making — breaking ground on an 18,805 square foot addition to their campus in Riverdale, Georgia.

The event brought together students, families, school leadership, local officials, and community members to celebrate what this building represents: a school that has grown from a few hundred students into one of the anchors of its community, and a community that has shown up for its kids at every step.

“DuBois Integrity Academy wants our families to know that we care about them,” said Executive Director Craig Cason. “They are the most significant and important thing that we do for this community and the school.”

That commitment to families runs through everything at DuBois — including the design of this new building.

Students made clear it already does. Asked what they love most about their school, one student didn’t hesitate: “The teachers and the activities we do.” Another had their eye on what’s coming: “The building is very nice and clean. I love that the basketball court — it looks very nice.”

Grow Schools supported DuBois on the facilities side of this project, helping manage the complexity of bringing a construction project like this to life. “At the end of the day, we want the schools to be focusing on the education, the operation of the school,” said Michael Soh, who served as project manager. “We come in and help build the team that helps bring the project together.”

The new building is set to open to students in the coming year.

Every school tracks new enrollment. Very few track what it costs them when a family quietly leaves.

Here’s the part most schools miss: keeping one family is worth far more than recruiting a new one. A retained family doesn’t just fill a seat. They refer friends, re-enroll siblings, renew year after year, and become the kind of advocate no ad campaign can replicate. A new family, by contrast, costs time, marketing spend, and staff hours just to get in the door.

Schools that treat retention as an afterthought are filling a leaky bucket. They pour resources into recruitment every year, never realizing that fixing the leak would have done more for enrollment than any new campaign.

The Real Cost of Losing a School Family

When a family leaves, the cost isn’t just one empty seat, it’s the:

marketing spend it took to recruit them in the first place
staff time spent touring, enrolling, and onboarding them
sibling who might have enrolled two years later
referral they might have made to a neighbor
the quiet signal it sends to other families watching, even if they never say anything out loud

Most schools can tell you their new enrollment numbers, but few can tell you how many families left mid-year, or why.

Retention Is Built Long Before a Family Considers Leaving

By the time a family is seriously weighing whether to leave, retention has already failed. The real work happens months earlier.

Pay attention to the quiet families. The loudest complaints are easy to spot and address. The bigger risk is the family who never says anything, who simply stops responding to emails, stops showing up to events, and re-enrolls without enthusiasm if they re-enroll at all. Build in regular, genuine check-ins with families, not just the ones raising concerns.
Close the loop on every concern. A parent who raises an issue and never hears back learns that raising issues doesn’t matter. A parent who raises an issue and gets a real response, even if the answer isn’t exactly what they wanted, learns that the school listens. That difference determines whether they stay.
Celebrate milestones, not just academics. Birthdays, classroom wins, a hard month finally turning around. Families remember being seen as people, not just as enrollment numbers.
Make re-enrollment a moment, not a formality. Re-enrollment is one of the clearest signals of family sentiment you have. A personal note from a teacher or the head of school during the re-enrollment season costs almost nothing and reinforces the relationship at exactly the right moment.

Retention Is an Enrollment Strategy, Not a Side Effect

The schools that grow steadily aren’t necessarily the ones running the most aggressive recruitment campaigns. They’re the ones who’ve made staying an obvious choice.

A retained family becomes an ambassador. They refer other families, post about your school without being asked, and re-enroll their other children without a second thought. That’s organic growth a marketing budget can’t buy, and it only happens if a school protects the relationships it already has.

Recruitment will always matter. Schools need new families to grow. But recruitment without retention is running in place, replacing the families you lose instead of building on the families you keep.

Where to Start?

Not sure where to start? Look at your numbers from a different angle this week. Not just how many families enrolled, but how many left, and when. Patterns will tell you where the leak is.

Then look at your check-ins. Are they happening consistently, or only when a problem surfaces? Build a simple cadence, a call, an email, a hallway conversation, that reaches every family, not just the ones raising their hand.

Retention isn’t a department. It’s a discipline. And it’s the most underrated lever a school has for sustainable enrollment growth.

About Kerry Selfinger

Kerry Selfinger is an enrollment marketing specialist who helps schools activate their most powerful marketing asset—their current families. She works with educational institutions to develop authentic referral strategies that turn word-of-mouth into scalable enrollment growth.