Charter Growth Stalls After Seven-Year Run

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT

For seven consecutive years, New Mexico's charter sector grew while traditional districts shrank. In 2025-26, that streak ended. Charter enrollment fell by 508 students, a 2.3% decline, the first contraction in the data going back to 2019. The drop is modest in absolute terms, but it breaks a pattern that had nearly doubled the sector since the pandemic began: from 13,534 students in 2019 to a peak of 22,242 in 2025.

The reversal does not mean charters and traditional districts now face the same pressures. Traditional enrollment fell by 7,825 students in the same year, 2.8% of its base. Charters still account for just 6.1% of the state's total enrollment decline. But the sector's immunity to the demographic forces draining New Mexico's schools, which lose roughly 4,000 to 8,000 students per year, appears to have expired.

Two schools, half the story

The contraction is not a sector-wide phenomenon. It is concentrated in two charter networks whose losses account for the bulk of the decline.

Mission Achievement and Success^↗, the state's largest charter operator with campuses in Albuquerque, dropped from 2,236 students to 1,898, a loss of 338 students (15.1%). That single operator accounts for two-thirds of the sector's net decline. MAS had been on a growth trajectory since 2019, when it enrolled 1,167 students, more than tripling its 2024 count by adding campuses and grade levels. Its 2026 contraction reversed three years of gains in a single year.

Explore Academy Las Cruces^↗ lost 174 students (29.0%), falling from 599 to 425. The Las Cruces campus closed its high school in June 2025 after just two years of operation, consolidating to a K-8 model. The school's board voted 5-0 to shut the high school division after facing a projected $659,000 deficit, with the alternative being full closure by December 2025, according to the Las Cruces Bulletin.

Together, MAS and Explore Academy Las Cruces account for 512 of the sector's 508-student net decline. Absent those two, the remaining 53 charters in both years essentially broke even.

The funding formula factor

New Mexico's 2025 funding formula overhaul, HB 63, restructured how charter schools receive at-risk student funding. The bill tied state support to each charter's own enrollment of economically disadvantaged students and English learners, rather than to the rate of the local district where the charter operates.

For charters serving high concentrations of at-risk students, this was a windfall. MAS was initially projected to receive nearly $2 million more, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported, though actual gains were smaller because enrollment came in below projections. For charters serving fewer at-risk students, the formula shift hit hard. Explore Academy's Albuquerque flagship lost just over $2 million of a $19.7 million operating budget; its Las Cruces campus lost $1.5 million from a $9 million budget, most of it attributable to the enrollment shortfall that precipitated the high school closure.

The formula change created a structural incentive for charters to enroll at-risk populations, and a structural penalty for those that do not. Whether this contributed to the enrollment shifts visible in the data is difficult to disentangle from the demographic headwinds affecting all New Mexico schools.

A reclassification, not a closure

One charter school that appears to have "vanished" from the 2026 charter rolls is the Albuquerque Institute of Math and Science (AIMS), which enrolled 311 students as a state-chartered school in 2025. AIMS does not appear in the 2026 charter data. However, the school continues to operate: it shows up in 2026 enrollment records as a campus under Albuquerque Public Schools with 324 students, and it announced a new campus partnership with Central New Mexico Community College in 2025. The school was reclassified from charter to district authorization, not closed. This reclassification accounts for roughly 311 of the 508-student raw decline. Adjusting for it, the organic enrollment loss across charters that remained in the sector was approximately 197 students.

Brick-and-mortar charters contract; virtual charters do not

The decline is entirely a brick-and-mortar phenomenon. New Mexico's two virtual charter operators, Pecos Cyber Academy and New Mexico Connections Academy, together enrolled 3,124 students in 2026, up 68 from the prior year. Virtual charters now account for 14.4% of all charter enrollment, up from 7.6% in 2019.

Brick-and-mortar charters, by contrast, fell from 19,186 to 18,610, a loss of 576 students. This tracks with the broader pattern visible in traditional districts: physical schools are losing students to a combination of declining birth cohorts, out-migration, and competition from virtual alternatives.

Growth that was already decelerating

The 2026 reversal did not arrive without warning. Charter growth rates had been slowing for three years: from +14.5% in 2023 to +9.3% in 2024 to +3.6% in 2025. The sector added 2,494 students in 2023 but only 775 in 2025. The curve was flattening well before it turned negative.

The number of charter entities also peaked. New Mexico had 58 charter districts in 2024 and 2025; it has 57 in 2026. The sector added 12 entities between 2019 and 2024, an average of more than two per year. In the last two years, none were added and one (AIMS) was reclassified out.

Losing students, gaining share

Despite losing students, charters' share of total public enrollment actually ticked up, from 7.25% to 7.28%. The math: traditional districts lost students faster (2.8%) than charters did (2.3%), so the charter slice of a shrinking pie grew marginally.

This is a pattern worth watching. A sector can lose students and gain market share simultaneously when the overall system is contracting. It means the charter share number alone is not a reliable indicator of sector health. The question is whether families are choosing charters at higher rates, or whether charters are simply declining more slowly than the districts they draw from.

Bright spots amid the contraction

Not all charters contracted. Solare Collegiate Charter School^↗ added 123 students, growing 39.2% from 314 to 437. Hozho Academy gained 71 students (9.1%). ABQ School of Excellence added 68 (6.8%). Cottonwood Classical Prep grew by 65 (7.6%). Twenty-five of the 55 charters present in both years gained enrollment.

These gains point to continued demand for certain charter models, particularly in Albuquerque's metro area. The growth, however, was not enough to offset the losses concentrated at the top.

A $52.8 million bet on expansion

The federal government awarded Public Charter Schools of New Mexico a $52.8 million Charter School Program grant in 2023 to fund 28 subgrants for new and expanding charters over five years. Executive Director Matt Pahl said the grant aims to generate 7,500 new seats, with priority for communities without existing charter options.

New Mexico is projected to see enrollment declines far exceeding the national average as birth cohorts shrink. The charter sector spent seven years growing against that current. In 2025-26, the current won. The $52.8 million grant will fund new seats. Whether families show up to fill them depends on forces no grant can control: how many children are born in New Mexico, how many families stay, and whether charters can keep growing in a state that keeps getting smaller.

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Solare Collegiate Charter School - EdTribune NM - New Mexico Education Data