Getting Ahead of Declining Enrollment
At our recent Community Forum with Montessori Thrive, we talked about something many of us have felt, but few have said out loud: Toddler enrollment is down. As I dug deeper, I realized that After School showed the same pattern. Fewer tours, fewer applications, and Toddler rooms that once had waitlists now have open seats heading into the fall.
As I listened, my mind jumped ahead. If the Toddler room is light this year, what will Primary look like in a year or two? And what will Elementary look like a few years after that? A dip at the youngest level is never just a Toddler problem. It is a preview of the whole school's future, arriving early enough that we still have time to respond.
That is the good news hidden in a difficult conversation. Declining Toddler enrollment is a warning we can act on now, before it becomes a budget crisis.
The Toddler Room Is Your Leading Indicator
In a Montessori school, the Toddler program is more than just one level among many. For most of us, it is the front door. Families who enroll a child at 15-18 months are most likely to stay for the full three-year Primary cycle and often into Elementary. Those early years build trust, and trust is what carries a family through re-enrollment season after re-enrollment season.
When the Toddler room is full, Primary largely fills itself. Children transition up, families already understand the prepared environment and the work cycle, and the school spends less energy recruiting from outside. When the Toddler room thins, that internal pipeline thins with it. The seats in Primary still need to be filled, but now they must be filled with families new to Montessori, new to your community, and often comparing you to a public pre-K program that costs them nothing.
This is why a dip at the Toddler level warrants attention from the entire leadership team, not just the admissions office. It is the earliest signal we have about the shape of our school three, five, and even eight years from now.
Understanding What Is Driving the Decline
Before we can respond effectively, we have to be honest about what is happening. Some of the forces at work are larger than any one school. U.S. births fell to about 3.6 million in 2025, and the general fertility rate dropped to a record low of 53.2 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, according to the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics. That rate has been trending downward.
The same data shows birth rates falling among women in their twenties and rising among women in their thirties. Families are having children later and having fewer of them. In many of our communities, there are simply fewer toddlers than there were a decade ago.
Cost is another real pressure. Child Care Aware of America reports the national average price of childcare at $13,184 per year in 2025. That is about 10% of the median income for a two-parent household and 33% for a single parent. Toddler programs are expensive to run because of the required ratios, and those costs fall on families at a stage of life when budgets are often tightest.
Many parents are also piecing together care in new ways, using grandparents, flexible work schedules, or a parent staying home longer than planned. Public and subsidized pre-K options continue to expand, which can lead families to wait and enter at age three or four instead of starting with us as toddlers.
Here in New Mexico, the cost picture looks different. Since November 1, 2025, the state's Universal Child Care program has covered care at participating licensed and registered providers, with no income limits or copays. Schools that accept Child Care Assistance cannot charge families the difference between the state rate and their private tuition. The good news? AMI-recognized and AMS-accredited programs now qualify for the state's 5-Star quality level! I am very proud of this accomplishment in our state.
For New Mexico schools, that changes the question. When care is free to families at so many programs, price is no longer what sets one school apart from another. What remains is whether families know what a Montessori Toddler program offers and whether we have made it easy for them to say yes.
And then there is the piece we control most directly: awareness. Many parents of very young children have never heard of a Montessori Toddler program. They know what daycare is. They may know what Montessori Primary is. But the idea that a toddler can pour their own water, prepare a snack, or care for a plant in a prepared environment designed for them is still new to many families. If they do not know it exists, they cannot choose it.
What We Can Do Now
The first step is to reach families earlier. Most of our outreach targets parents who are already looking for a school. By then, many have already made a care decision. Parent-infant classes, a Saturday morning parent-and-child group, or a simple open playtime in your Toddler environment invite families in before they are shopping. These gatherings let parents see their own child reaching for real work, and that experience is more persuasive than any brochure we could print.
Earlier outreach only works if follow-through is equally strong. A parent who tours in March and hears nothing until August has often found care elsewhere by then. Capture every inquiry in one place, keep those families gently in the loop, and make registration simple enough that a parent who is ready to say yes can complete it in an evening rather than over three weeks of paperwork. The shorter the path from curiosity to enrollment, the fewer families we lose along the way.
The second step is to tell the Toddler story more clearly. Ask your Toddler Guides what parents are most surprised by when they observe. Is it the calm? The independence? The way a two-year-old returns a work to the shelf without being asked? Those moments are your message. Share them through photos, short videos, and stories on your website and social channels, always with care for privacy, so that a parent searching for care at 1 a.m. with a teething baby finds something that sparks curiosity.
The third step is to scrutinize access. That might mean offering part-day or three-day options, partnering with your state's childcare assistance program, or creating a sibling or tuition assistance structure that keeps the Toddler level within reach. Flexibility can feel risky for budgeting, but an open seat earns nothing.
The fourth step is to protect the families you already have. A family that enrolls in Toddler and leaves before Primary is a pipeline leak we often do not notice until it is too late. Conferences, parent education evenings, and regular, specific updates on each child's growth help parents understand why staying through the transition matters. When parents can see progress, they are far more likely to stay for what comes next.
Finally, do not do this alone. Schools across our Montessori community face the same pressures. Shared parent education events, joint community outreach, and honest conversations among Heads of School, such as the one we had at the Forum, help all of us learn faster than any single school could on its own.
Know Your Numbers Before They Surprise You
None of this works well if we are guessing. As a Head of School, I have learned that the numbers that matter most are rarely the ones on the year-end summary. Total enrollment tells you where you are, but it does not tell you where you are going.
The more useful view is the journey a family takes with you. How many inquiries came in this month, and how many of those families toured? How many applied after touring, and how many enrolled? Of the children in Toddler today, how many are on track to move into Primary, and how many families have quietly signaled they might leave? Tracking those steps year over year lets you pinpoint exactly where families slip away, whether it is at the first phone call, after a tour, or during the transition between levels.
It also means knowing, at any moment, exactly how many open seats you have. Every empty seat is lost revenue, quietly, month after month. When you can see those seats in March instead of discovering them in August, you have time to reach back out to waitlisted families, focus your outreach on the level that needs it, and fill the gap before it becomes a hole in the budget. That is the difference between being proactive about enrollment and reacting to it.
I would encourage every school to project enrollment forward at least three years by level. Start with the children you have now, apply your actual retention rates at each transition, and see what Primary and Elementary would look like if nothing changes. That projection can be uncomfortable. It is also the clearest case you will ever make to your board, your staff, and yourself for acting today rather than next year.
Where noorana Fits
I built noorana because I have lived this work as a Head of School, and I know how much it depends on having the right information in front of you at the right time. Every step in this post is easier when your enrollment data lives in one place rather than scattered across spreadsheets, inboxes, and memory. Families register online through a simple process, and the admin dashboard shows your empty seats at a glance, so you can fill them before they cost you.
Noorana also strengthens relationships with families. Parents can learn what Montessori looks like at each level, communicate easily with the school, and pay tuition in one place.
Most importantly, parents can see what their child is doing in the classroom and which skills and concepts they are learning along the way. Many childcare updates stop at meals and naps. A Montessori Toddler program can show parents that their child is learning to pour water, care for a plant, put on their own shoes, and stay with a piece of work until it is finished. When parents can see that growth and understand the concepts behind it, the value of a Montessori education is no longer abstract. Knowing what your child is doing and learning is simply a better way to be part of their early years.
That does not mean the everyday details stop mattering. A toddler's parent still wants to know when their child napped, ate, and had a diaper change, and noorana's Day Focus provides exactly that, just as any childcare program would. The difference is that it does not stop there. Parents see daily care alongside the work and learning in the prepared environment. A family weighing a Montessori Toddler program against traditional childcare can see that they get everything childcare offers, plus much more. That understanding often turns a curious parent into an enrolled family and keeps an enrolled family for the full three-year cycle.
Noorana is free for every Montessori school. That is a values decision, not a promotion: the tools that help a school stay strong should not become one more line item in an already tight budget.
Acting While There Is Still Time
The schools that struggle most with enrollment are rarely the ones that saw a dip. They are the ones that saw it and waited. A light Toddler room this year is a gift of time if we choose to use it. We can reach families earlier, tell our story more clearly, make our programs more accessible, and retain the families who already trust us.
I left the Forum grateful for the honesty in that room and even more convinced that we are stronger when we face these questions together. If your school is seeing the same trend, I would love to hear what you are trying and what is working. The children in our Toddler rooms today will be the Primary and Elementary children of tomorrow. Let's make sure there is a place for them.
Tina Patel, Founder & CEO; noorana, Head of School, Montessori ONE Academy
Sources
Hamilton, B.E., and Osterman, M.J.K. Births in the United States, 2025. NCHS Data Brief No. 571, National Center for Health Statistics, October 2026.
Hamilton, B.E., Osterman, M.J.K., and Gregory, E.C.W. Births: Provisional Data for 2025. Vital Statistics Rapid Release No. 43, National Center for Health Statistics, April 2026.
Child Care Aware of America. Child Care in America: 2025 Price & Supply. May 2026.
New Mexico Early Childhood Education and Care Department. Universal Child Care. Accessed October 2026.
Ready to get ahead of enrollment at your school? Visit noorana.app to learn more.
