With the vast majority of K-12 students attending public schools, it’s crucial to continue expanding school choice in ways that benefit them. Since 2020, states have significantly expanded K-12 open enrollment laws, allowing students to attend public schools other than their assigned school. Eleven of the 17 states that strengthened their open enrollment programs in the past five years codified statewide programs so that all school districts must accept transfer applicants so long as seats are open in their grade level.
Strong open enrollment laws give students and their families agency in school selection, letting families choose other public schools when a student’s assigned school isn’t a good fit. Overall, these new open enrollment laws are a major victory for students, whose public school options are no longer limited by where they live.
However, a common weakness pervades these policies: States’ laws generally don’t include a standardized definition of “capacity.” This gives significant discretion to districts, letting them set inconsistent definitions of capacity that can unnecessarily limit options for families
While it is understandable that school districts would be concerned about ensuring they have the funding and staff needed to serve incoming transfer students, far too many districts are blocking transfer students they could easily accommodate.
For instance, a 2022 analysis by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs found that definitions of capacity “appear haphazard or even arbitrary from district to district” across Oklahoma, despite its stellar open enrollment law. In Oklahoma, school districts that experienced declining enrollment had policies stating they were at capacity and couldn’t accept transfer students, even though enrollment at those schools was lower than it had been. In one case, a student, after moving to a new district, tried to transfer back into his old district. Even though he had been enrolled in a school there for the previous two school years, the district claimed it was full and rejected his application. This highlights why consistent, well-designed capacity definitions are key to ensuring open enrollment implementation is fair and transparent.
Of the 23 states with statewide cross-district laws (allowing students to transfer to schools in other districts than their assigned district) and within-district (allowing transfers to schools in other attendance zones of their assigned district) open enrollment policies, most of them provide some factors that districts can take into account when determining their available capacity, such as staffing, student-teacher pupil ratios, class size, program size, grade, or building occupancy.
However, even when these parameters are outlined in state law, districts often have significant discretion in their implementation or may even choose to use other methodologies. That’s because most laws often only highlight certain methods of calculating capacity that districts “may” use.
For example, laws in Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Utah require each school district to use one or more of the factors outlined in state law to determine its capacity. But most states have less rigorous requirements and encourage, rather than require, districts to use the listed factors in their capacity measurements.
Figure 1 below shows the factors school districts may use when defining capacity in states with statewide cross- or within-district open enrollment policies.
Figure 1: Factors that may be used to define capacity per state law in select states
| State | Building capacity | Class size | Staff | Student-teacher ratio | Program size | Grade level |
| Arizona | X | |||||
| Arkansas * | X | X | ||||
| California | X | |||||
| Colorado | X | X | ||||
| Delaware | X | X | X | X | ||
| Florida * | X | X | ||||
| Georgia | ||||||
| Idaho * | X | |||||
| Iowa | X | X | X | X | X | X |
| Kansas * | X | X | X | |||
| Montana | X | X | X | X | ||
| Nebraska * | X | |||||
| Nevada | X | X | ||||
| New Hampshire | ||||||
| North Dakota | X | X | X | |||
| Ohio | X | X | X | |||
| Oklahoma * | X | |||||
| South Dakota * | X | X | X | X | ||
| Tennessee * | X | X | X | X | ||
| Utah * | X | |||||
| Washington | ||||||
| West Virginia | X | X | ||||
| Wisconsin | X | X | X | X |
Source: State education codes.
Note 1: States listed with an asterisk require districts to use one or more of the listed factors in their capacity determinations.
Note 2: Program size can refer to special education classes or other specialized courses.
While most states identify one or more factors in statute that districts must or may use to measure capacity, at least three—Georgia, New Hampshire, and Washington—don’t provide any parameters for calculating capacity in state code, leaving definitions to the discretion of local or state education agencies.
Even when state law identifies specific capacity metrics, districts often get to decide how to implement them. For example, districts could use building capacity to measure space for their general education courses, but then use program size or staffing to determine the number of spots available in their special education programs. In other cases, some states allow districts to base their maximum capacity on state- or district-average class sizes. Accordingly, capacity measurements can easily become convoluted or even seemingly arbitrary.
As more states adopt robust open enrollment laws, policymakers should strengthen and standardize definitions of capacity, adding uniformity to the open enrollment process and maximizing students’ transfer opportunities. This analysis reviews the strengths and weaknesses of the most common factors identified by states’ laws as criteria for districts’ capacity calculations, starting with examples of each.
Building capacity
In Wisconsin, some school districts base their capacity on the space in their school buildings, per the state’s Department of Public Instruction. Using building design, the district calculates the number of spaces available in each building or classroom. Any seats that are unfilled by current students are open to transfer students. When calculating the available space for multiple school buildings, the number of extra seats must be aggregated by grade.
Class size
State law in Utah requires districts to evaluate how many seats are available based on their enrollment thresholds, which are 90% of their available space or their maximum capacity minus 40 students (whichever is greater). A district’s maximum capacity is equal to the total number of students in a school building based on the average class size per grade or instructional station.
The enrollment threshold allows Utah districts to reserve 10% of their seats to accommodate students who may move into their boundaries during the school year. So long as projected enrollments are less than 90% of the building’s available space, transfers are permitted.
Figure 2 shows how some of Utah’s Provo City School District schools calculated their available capacity during the 2025-26 school year.
Figure 2: Capacity calculations in select Utah schools
| School Building | Maximum Capacity | Open Enrollment Threshold is 90% of Max Capacity | Enrollment Oct 1, 2025 | 2025-26 Requests Received | 2025-26 Requests Approved |
| Edgemont Elementary | 715 | 644 | 589 | 128 | 73 |
| Westridge Elementary | 660 | 594 | 544 | 44 | 18 |
Source: Provo School District, Open Enrollment Capacity Report, Nov. 18, 2025
Note: Transfer requests are made during the preceding school year, so the Oct. 1 enrollment count includes approved transfer requests.
Grade level
At least six states permit districts to determine their available space based on the number of students in a particular grade level.
For example, under Wisconsin’s methodology, transfers are only approved if the projected number of students in a grade level is less than the maximum number of students. Available space equals capacity minus the projected enrollment. This becomes more complicated in high school when students take multiple courses and move between classrooms. In these situations, districts will measure their available capacity based on one or more core subjects often taken by students in a particular grade. According to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, using grade level to determine capacity was the most common methodology as of 2021.
Program capacity
Other states limit the number of transfers based on program capacity. For instance, in Delaware, districts must accept transfers to a particular program until it reaches 85% of its capacity. Districts can define program capacity based on several factors, such as physical space, physical resources, and class sizes, as permitted by state law.
In some cases, districts may use the same methodology to identify a program’s capacity in the same way that building capacity is calculated. For example, in 2023, Wisconsin’s Wauwatosa School District calculated the number of seats available for Underwood Elementary’s USTEM program (a program focused on science, technology, engineering, and math) as it did the whole school’s capacity: a student-to-teacher ratio tailored to maintain small class sizes school-wide.
In other cases, transfer applicants may be considered on a case-by-case basis, such as those applying to Iowa’s Monticello Community School District’s special education program. Admission is permitted if the district’s director of special education determines that current special education programs meet an applicant’s needs and that space is available in the class. Monticello calculates the maximum class size for special education programs based on teachers’ caseloads, which are determined by 20 factors, including the number of students instructed, the hours of instruction provided to various students, students’ behavior, and physical needs. Each factor is weighted and used to calculate a teacher’s caseload, which is full at 55 points. Non-resident transfers are capped when a teacher’s caseload reaches 50 points to ensure that seats are available to resident students.
Analysis
Of these methodologies, building capacity is the most straightforward measure of capacity, as it remains consistent over school years unless building plans change. It is also the starting point for all other measures of capacity, because a school building’s size ultimately limits the number of students it can accommodate.
One challenge of this methodology is when dealing with older school facilities. Building designs from the mid-20th century or later may not correspond to modern or updated facilities, lacking labs or other specialized rooms. In some cases, these older buildings may even hold more students than they were originally designed to.
Additionally, buildings can be subject to fluctuations, such as temporary structures like trailers, which are sometimes used to accommodate unexpected enrollment surges.
Despite this shortcoming, basing a school district’s maximum enrollment on its collective building capacity is better than other capacity measures because the number of seats is based on the real limitations of building design and structure.
Other capacity measures, such as class size, grade, or program, aren’t necessarily based on concrete parameters, such as building space. Instead, these metrics let districts group students as they see fit, regardless of their available space. This lets districts artificially cap classroom sizes and block transfers, especially when based on averages and not the actual number of open seats, as in Utah’s case. As a result, these methodologies are more susceptible to arbitrary capacity limits.
For example, Wisconsin students with disabilities are rejected at significantly higher rates than their non-disabled peers. During the 2023-24 school year, 44% of students with disabilities were denied transfers, while just 22% of non-disabled transfer applicants were rejected that year. This is likely because state law lets districts reject students with disabilities based on program size.
Consequently, a transfer applicant who is also a student with disabilities could be denied a transfer even if there is room available in their grade’s general education classrooms. This means that students are barred from attending schools that are a better fit for them, even when districts have the space to accommodate them.
Recommendations for policymakers
Lawmakers and state officials should standardize capacity measures to maximize students’ schooling options, thereby strengthening their open enrollment laws. Ideally, they should do this by basing capacity on maximum building occupancy. Maximum building occupancy would only include the school’s various learning stations, excluding non-learning spaces, such as hallways, bathrooms, and facilities reserved for administration or teacher preps. Accordingly, each school building’s maximum capacity would be the total number of students that each learning station’s physical capacity can accommodate.
A component of the District of Columbia Public Schools’ (DCPS) capacity calculation offers a good example of what this can look like. The district uniformly categorizes all school spaces, distinguishing between different learning spaces, such as classrooms, labs, administrative spaces, and gyms. DCPS then identifies the “ideal number of students that a room can accommodate, based on its designated and scheduled use,” known as the raw capacity or loading capacity. By multiplying the room category by the raw capacity, DCPS calculates its overall capacity. Applying a similar methodology to districts across a state would standardize capacity metrics, establishing a more uniform system.
Alternatively, states could also permit districts to use their most recent enrollment peak between 2019 and 2025 to establish maximum capacity.
Nationwide, K-12 public school enrollment reached its peak in 2020 but has since declined by 2.5%, or about 1.3 million students. Accordingly, districts’ most recent peak enrollment provides a reasonable estimate of their maximum capacity, as most districts are now serving fewer students.
Any district that has permanently closed schools since 2020 should be able to apply to the state education agency for a waiver to reduce its maximum capacity by the number of seats previously available in the closed school.
Another way policymakers could improve their open enrollment capacity is by standardizing a baseline for school-wide enrollment thresholds, such as in Utah and Delaware.
In these cases, districts must accept transfer students until they hit their enrollment thresholds–90% and 85% of capacity, respectively. But instead of relying on class size averages, as many Utah and Delaware districts do, enrollment thresholds should reflect actual physical building capacity.
Ideally, these thresholds would reserve no more than 10% of a building’s maximum capacity or the most recent peak enrollment to account for enrollment fluctuations during the school year. Once transfers are admitted to a receiving district, they should be included in all future student counts and have the same status as resident students. Districts could raise their enrollment thresholds to admit more students if they saw fit, while keeping fewer seats in reserve. Yet, once an enrollment threshold is increased, districts shouldn’t be able to reverse it. Otherwise, it would essentially operate as a cap that districts could raise and lower at will.
Overall, these adjustments require planning and forward thinking on the part of district administrators.
For example, Denver Public Schools (DPS) includes open enrollment transfers in its annual strategic analysis, which reviews enrollment drivers and projections, helping the district plan for enrollment fluctuations. DPS’ report tracks the impact of students transferring into and out of it and tracks the effects of within-district transfers on its attendance zones.
One way to plan for open enrollment transfers is to reserve space for them in advance, just as many districts already do for students who might move into their district midyear. This will become easier as open enrollment programs become more established, because administrators will have a sense of how many students they will gain or lose through them.
Lastly, even in states with strong open enrollment laws, most school districts aren’t transparent about how they determine capacity. More states should emulate Utah, which requires districts to post their capacity calculations on their websites annually. This data could also be incorporated into state education agencies’ annual open enrollment reports.
Conclusion
As more states adopt stronger open enrollment laws, allowing more students to choose the public school that is best for them, policymakers should standardize capacity definitions and strengthen them to be based on school building occupancy or, at a minimum, recent peak enrollments.
This would be a big step in the right direction for many states, ensuring that public schools admit as many students as they can accommodate, maximizing students’ chances of attending schools that are a good fit.