Public schools still haven’t learned from the pandemic
Zachary Faria
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Over one million students across the country left the public school system between fall 2019 and fall 2020. As a result, several public school districts will be strained as they lose funding.
Maybe now politicians and school officials will take their jobs more seriously.
Public school enrollment dropped from 50.8 million in fall 2019 to 49.4 million in fall 2020, a direct result of parents moving their children into charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling. Those parents knew what school officials and politicians didn’t: children need to be in school in person, and the minimal risk to them from COVID-19 did not justify keeping them out of school.
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Public school enrollment has not recovered since then, either. New York, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia were among the biggest losers, seeing 10% declines, and 85 of the 100 largest school districts in the country saw enrollment drops.
Did Democratic politicians and public health bureaucrats learn their lessons? Of course not.
Michigan was one of the two biggest losers in public school enrollment, yet the state is still embracing COVID fanaticism. Ann Arbor Public Schools, where 50% of students are minorities and 16% are economically disadvantaged, is imposing mask mandates on students from Jan. 9 to Jan. 20. There is no evidence that mask mandates even hinder the spread of COVID, and there has never been evidence that children are at any serious risk from the virus.
It has been clear since April 2020 that children are the last people who should be forcibly masked, yet they are still the first targeted by anti-science public school districts, who care more about political posturing than educating anyone. Neither Michigan’s Democratic governor nor its Democratic state legislature has stepped in to do anything about this. Like (mostly Democratic) politicians in other states, they have allowed public schools to focus on making children miserable rather than returning them to normal. Is it any surprise that public schools are bleeding enrollment?
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While there are undoubtedly great teachers in public schools, many public school districts are just rotten to their core. Many are run by administrators who have no regard for children, and they are overseen by politicians who would sooner use children to score political points than they would ensure that schools are actually teaching them.
If more than a million million departing students, and the loss of funding isn’t enough to teach the lesson, then get ready for the next million to leave.