New Hampshire public school enrollment continues to decline at a faster rate than teacher employment, a Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy analysis of state data shows. Over the last 15 years, public schools in New Hampshire lost students at nearly three times the rate at which they lost teachers.
From the 2011-2012 school year to the 2025-26 school year, K-12 public school enrollment fell by 30,483 students, for a decline of 16%.
The number of public school teachers fell by 849, for a decline of 5.7%. 
Thus the rate of teacher loss was just 36% of the rate at which districts lost students.
Only once in the last 15 years (from the 2021-22) did the number of public school students in New Hampshire rise rather than fall.
By contrast, the number of teachers rose in five of the last 15 years (2016-17, 2019-20, 2020-21, 2022-23, and 2024-25), totaling 1/3 of the time period.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the gap between the student loss rate and the teacher loss rate has remained largely the same.
From 2020-26, the number of teachers employed in New Hampshire public schools fell by 3.5% while the number of students fell by 9%, putting the teacher loss rate at 38% of the student loss rate.
As a result of the more rapid decline in students vs. teachers, the number of students per teacher, already low by national standards, has continued to fall.
In the 2011-12 school year, New Hampshire public schools employed one teacher for every 12.7 students.
In 2020, the ratio was down to one teacher for every 12 students.
In the current 2025-26 school year, the ratio is down to one teacher for every 11.3 students.
Only New York, Vermont and Washington, D.C., have lower student-teacher ratios, according to the National Education Association.
The NEA’s figures for total K-12 public school teachers in New Hampshire are significantly higher than the numbers maintained by the state Education Department. The NEA’s most recent report claims a 7% decline in the number of N.H. public school teachers between the 2024 and 2025 school years, with a loss of 1,062 teachers. But those numbers are not reflected in the state’s data.
The state data show a loss of just 53 teachers statewide from 2024-25, for a decline of 0.36%.
Teachers are not the only public school employees, of course. Changes in other employment categories from 2012-2026 reveal interesting differences:
- Instructional support staff: -7.3%
- Administrative support staff: -2.3%
- Specialists: + 2.6%
- Librarians: +3.5%
- All other support staff: -19%
As student enrollment fell by 16%, New Hampshire public schools employed 11 more librarians and 66 more specialists, but 33 fewer administrative support staffers and 684 fewer non-instructional and non-administrative support staff members.
It’s worth noting that the number of school districts and schools (including public charter schools) changed during this time. Still, the data unmistakably show that over the last 15 years New Hampshire school districts have chosen to maintain high faculty staffing levels relative to the number of students enrolled.
As we’ve noted before, maintaining high staffing levels forces districts to stretch limited dollars over larger numbers of employees, reducing the amount of compensation available for each employee.
