San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Student dropoff could be expensive
Districts fear loss of funds if families never come back
California’s public schools lost more than 160,000 students amid the pandemic, a striking decline in enrollment that could have a longterm impact on the financial stability of districts across the state.
The decline was mostly among kindergarten through third grade, which lost 107,000 students this school year.
State officials said they were “drilling down” to identify where those families went — and if they would be back.
All told, the state’s public schools enrolled 6,002,523 traditional and charter school students at the beginning of the school year, a 3% decline, officials said.
“It’s complex,” said Stephanie Gregson, chief deputy at the California Department of Education. “Every family has their own unique circumstances.”
It’s unclear how many students moved out of state, transferred to private schools, opted to homeschool this year or just stopped attending.
The data is from the oneday annual enrollment snapshot in October. It does not include any students who might have left the public system since, num
Weather
Some rain. Highs: 51-59. Lows: 38-49.
bers that won’t be publicly available until the fall.
“It is concerning to see this decrease, especially those in our youngest grades,” said state Superintendent Tony Thurmond in a statement. Thurmond said that as more schools reopen, enrollment might rebound, but “we also must help schools identify opportunities to engage with families who either sought new options for their students during the pandemic, or need additional resources and support to connect with school and succeed.”
The decline was among traditional public schools, with charter schools showing a slight increase of about 15,000 students. Individual charter schools and private schools were more likely to reopen than large districts, where logistical challenges were greater and labor agreements required.
The state data shows that about 30,000 students enrolled in new private schools registered this year with the state. The vast majority, more than 27,000, were in private schools serving five students or less, typically homeschool environments. It’s unclear whether those students were previously in private schools or in public schools.
San Francisco Unified dipped to 51,756 students, down 1,000 students from the previous October, while the city’s charter schools took an even bigger enrollment hit, down 1,300 students to a total of 6,949.
“The pandemic has changed the circumstances of many, not just families in San Francisco, and enrollment decline can be seen in many school districts throughout the state,” said district spokeswoman Gentle Blythe. “Each story is different — some may be moving away, some may be choosing other schools. While we do demographic projections to help us plan for predicted enrollment, none of those projections accounted for this pandemic and its many reverberations.”
The district is probably looking at a loss of more students in the fall, with more than 500 fewer applications for kindergarten and other grades compared to last year. That number doesn’t include current families in the district that won’t return in August.
That could be offset by a surge of students over the summer, including schoolage immigrants in process at the country’s southern border.
Parent Lorin Yin will have to decide in the next two weeks whether she will be among those leaving San Francisco’s public school system. Her secondgrade son currently attends the Mandarin immersion program at Starr King Elementary, but has been accepted to a similar program at a private school.
The slow reopening of district schools and the treatment of parents advocating for a return to inperson learning by officials was too much to bear, Lin said, who spent hours waiting for the topic to come up
California public school enrollment
Comparing enrollment figures for select Bay Area school districts over the past two years, not including charter schools. Overall, California saw a decline of more than 160,000 students amid the pandemic.
2019-20
Berkeley
Hayward
Oakland
San Francisco
West Contra Costa
Novato
2020-21
San Mateo/Foster City during school board meetings.
“It was embarrassing to be in those board meetings at hour seven,” she said. “It completely broke me this year.”
The family has been dedicated advocates for public schools, volunteering and working to make their elementary school more equitable and less segregated between the Mandarin program and traditional classes.
Lin said she still is concerned the public schools will not fully reopen in the fall, despite the fact that the school board pledged in early April to reopen schools fulltime in the fall to all students. Lin said if schools don’t fully reopen it would be untenable for her family given their work schedules.
“There’s no version of this where we would have voluntarily left the school,” Lin said. “I feel pushed out of the school system. I feel like I’m not fleeing it, I feel like I’m being kicked out.”
The longterm implications of enrollment loss could devastate districts like San Francisco already grappling with huge budget deficits.
Districts will not lose any state funding because of declining enrollment, at least until the 202223 school year. But beyond that, it’s possible that the loss of students could hit the bottom line of local school systems, reducing state funding by an estimated $10,000 per student or more — or about $10 million in San Francisco.
While the state and federal government have pushed billions of dollars into the schools this year, that is largely onetime funding meant to assist districts address pandemicrelated needs.
In Oakland, the district noncharter schools lost about 665 students year over year, bringing enrollment down to 35,489 — a record low among the past two decades.
It’s unclear what the enrollment declines across the state would mean in terms of layoffs or other cuts, state officials said.
“It’s too soon to tell,” Gregson said.