MANCHESTER, NH  October 27, 2025–As members of the Manchester Board of School Committee continue to complain about inadequate funding in the current election cycle, they are ignoring official numbers on file with the NH Department of Education (NH DOE) showing the Manchester School District’s enrollment has declined for the eighth time in the past ten years.  According to the District Fall Enrollment numbers published by the NH DOE, Manchester’s official enrollment as of October 1, 2025 has fallen 1.3% from last year to 11,711.

In the lead up to the adoption of the school board’s budget, school officials not only used last year’s enrollment of 11,865 students, they, along with Mayor Jay Ruais, asserted that enrollment was growing, with administrators frequently saying the district was serving more than 12,000 students.

Schools in New Hampshire are required to report the number of enrolled students as of October 1 each year.

Looking back ten years, the district’s official enrollment has fallen by 2,176 or 15.7% since SY 2017.  Then, its District Fall Enrollment was 13,887.  Over that same period of time, the school budget appropriated by the Board of Mayor and Aldermen (BMA) has increased by more than a whopping $72.8 million, from $165,173,307 in FY 2017 to $237,999,925 in FY 2026; a staggering increase of 44.1%.  Had school spending merely kept pace with inflation as enrollment dropped, the budget would be $221,332,231 according to the inflation calculator on the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics Web site.

The dramatic increase in overall spending doesn’t tell the whole story, however.  The increase in per pupil spending has been meteoric over the same ten year period.  Based only on the city’s appropriation for schools, school spending was $11,894 per pupil.  Currently, that number is $20,323; an increase of 71%.  Note well that this does not include federal Title funds, which total more than $25 million this year, adding another $2,135 per pupil.

Ruais has bragged about increasing school funding by $11 million since becoming mayor, boasting that he’s given schools a “record” level of funding.  School officials, led by at-Large Committeeman Jim O’Connell, have complained bitterly about the school budget being “cut” because they asked for an additional $9 million for the current year’s budget. which is $2.5 million more than last year’s budget, despite the decrease of 154 students this year over last.