Sweetwater County School District #1ET peaked at 5,749 students in 2016. Wyoming's fourth-largest district was flush. Trona mining (the state is the world's largest producer) and natural gas extraction provided the jobs that filled the schools of Rock Springs and Green River.

Ten years later, the district enrolls 4,481 students. That is a 22.1 percent decline, the steepest percentage loss among Wyoming's mid-size and large districts and a rate that exceeds even the hard-hit coal capital of Gillette.

Six years of falling

The district has lost students in six consecutive years, with no year of relief. The losses: 338 in 2021, 87 in 2022, 3 in 2023, 209 in 2024, 53 in 2025, and 308 in 2026. The 2026 drop of 308 students is the second-largest in the six-year run, trailing only the first pandemic year.

The pattern does not resemble a pandemic recovery stalling. It resembles an economy contracting and the families leaving with it. The trona industry has automated. Natural gas faces competition from other basins. The family-wage extraction jobs that built Rock Springs and Green River are not being replaced at the same rate they are disappearing.

Schools hollowing out

The decline has hit every level of the district, but the largest losses have come from schools that have closed or consolidated. Three schools that existed in 2016, Overland Elementary, Westridge Elementary, and Lincoln Elementary, no longer appear in the 2026 data. Their students were absorbed by remaining schools.

Among the surviving schools, Northpark Elementary has lost 146 students since 2016, falling from 306 to 160. Rock Springs Junior High dropped from 827 to 688. Desert View Elementary went from 284 to 182. Rock Springs High School, the district's flagship campus, declined from 1,395 to 1,316.

Two elementary schools have bucked the trend. Pilot Butte Elementary grew from 428 to 525, and Eastside Elementary went from 425 to 484. These schools likely absorbed students from the closed campuses rather than attracting new families.

Falling faster than Gillette

Rock Springs' decline rate of 22.1 percent since 2016 exceeds Campbell #1ET (Gillette), which is down 10.7 percent over the same period. Both are energy-dependent, but their extraction industries face different headwinds. Coal, Gillette's base, has declined nationally but still employs significant numbers. Trona and gas, Rock Springs' base, have faced both demand shifts and automation.

The divergence is notable because both communities are experiencing the same statewide forces: falling birth rates, an aging population, housing costs. What separates them is the pace of their respective industry contractions. Rock Springs is further along in the energy transition than Gillette, and the enrollment data reflects it.

At 4,481 students (below even its 2001 level of 4,665), Sweetwater #1 has given back everything the energy boom provided. If Wyoming's energy counties are canaries in the state's demographic coal mine, Rock Springs stopped singing first.

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