Laurel Duggan on January 5, 2023
NEW YORK, NY – Enrollment in public schools in New York City and Philadelphia are dropping.
According to Department of Education (DOE) data analyzed by The Wall Street Journal, American public schools lost 1.4 million students between fall 2019 and fall 2020.
Many districts were already seeing drops in enrollment due to declining birthrates, but a surge in homeschooling and a mass movement of students into private and charter schools resulted in a nearly 3% drop in public school enrollment between 2019 and 2020, according to the Wall Street Journal. Several districts are currently experiencing difficulty funding shrinking schools.
New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Fort Worth, Texas, all saw school enrollment drop about 10% from 2019 to 2021, and 85 0f the 100 largest school districts with available data saw a decline in enrollment in those years, according to the WSJ. Drops in enrollment can result in funding loss for public schools, which typically receive funding on a per-student basis from cities, states and the federal government; with fewer students and less funding, some schools have been forced to close.
“We are subsidizing and adding funds to those schools as much as we possibly can, but it’s just not sustainable,” said St. Paul, Minnesota, Superintendent Joe Gothard told the WSJ. The district shut down five schools last summer, and other districts are making similar moves.
A one-time influx of federal money to public schools may be preventing some from shutting their doors, according to the WSJ. For districts that do have to close schools, consolidated schools are able to offer more classes and extracurriculars at a lower cost.
Jefferson County, Colorado, is moving to close 16 schools and Oakland, California, is closing seven, according to the WSJ. Meanwhile, charter schools saw a 7% surge in enrollment from 2020 to 2021.
The Department of Education did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Public School Enrollment Tanked By Over One Million Students During Pandemic
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