SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — California public schools have experienced a sharp decline in enrollment this year as the pandemic forced millions into online school, according to data made public Thursday.

The drop came as the state’s school districts dawdled in bringing children back to the classroom, making California one of the slowest in the country to reopen schools.

The California Department of Education data shows that the number of students at K-12 schools dropped by more than 160,000 this academic year, most of them at the K-6 level, to a total of 6 million.

The drop is by far the biggest decline in years and represents the clearest picture yet of the pandemic’s devastating toll on California public schools.

“The annual snapshot of fall enrollment shows a sharp one-year decline as the state and nation grappled with a deadly pandemic that disrupted all aspects of public education,” the education department said in a statement.

The exodus was led by white students who account for just 22% of California’s public school population but represent about half of the departing students for the 2020-21 school year, which could increase disparities in California’s public education system.

California has the most students of all states in the U.S. and the overall student body has hovered at about 6.2 million in recent years. In previous years, the number of students fell by about 20,000 to 30,000 annually, led by declining birth rates, and that rate was expected to continue.

When the pandemic hit and Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered public schools to close in March 2020, no one expected the closures would last as long as they did.

Most of California’s public schools started this academic year with distance learning and many continued that method into the spring. In-person classes started resuming this month in the state’s largest urban school districts.

Among the concerned parents who switched to private school was Aurora Guel, a San Diego County mother who said distance learning sent her high school senior into a downward spiral.

“She became really depressed with all the isolation that started when school closed,” said Guel.

Her 18-year-old daughter’s grades had dropped to the point she was failing three classes; she lost motivation to apply for college and wouldn’t leave her room, even for dinner with the family.

“We needed to do something to get her out of this deep hole she had fallen into,” Guel said.

After transferring to a private Catholic school in October, the teen’s spirits and her grades are up. She has a college acceptance and is looking forward to her prom, a milestone that many public schools have scrapped. “She’s doing so much better now,” her mother said.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond called the numbers concerning but said officials are optimistic that enrollment will rebound as more schools reopen to in-person learning. He said officials are working with schools and families to understand why so many families left and how to bring them back.

The public school exodus happened nationwide. There is no national data available on the 2020-2021 enrollment decline but an analysis from 33 states by the Chalkbeat nonprofit news organization covering education and The Associated Press published in December showed that public K-12 enrollment in the fall had dropped by about 500,000 students compared to the previous school year.

California’s 2020-2021 enrollment declined 2.6% from the previous school year, driven by a combination of factors.

Fewer California parents enrolled their children in kindergarten, which accounts for a decline of 61,000 students and the largest drop in enrollment.

That could indicate that parents either held off sending their children to kindergarten or enrolled them in private schools, which saw an overall enrollment increase of 20,000, or 4%, from the previous year. The data also indicate that homeschooling surged in the fall, the CDE said.

Some of California’s biggest urban districts had the largest declines.

Los Angeles Unified School District, the largest in the state, experienced an enrollment decline of almost 22,000, or 4%, to 575,000, the CDE said.

The data released Thursday was collected from all of the state’s school districts in October, and education officials say it is too soon to know if the trend has continued since then.

Year-end figures won’t be known for months but the data help illustrate how the pandemic upended public schools and has prompted concerns about funding for California’s 1,000 school districts, which is tied to headcounts.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget proposal calls for schools not to be penalized for enrollment declines, but education advocates are seeking extra money for low-income students, English learners and foster kids.

“Any changes in enrollment will have impacts on funding and equity,” said Christopher Nellum, interim executive director for The Education Trust-West, an education equity advocacy group. “It’s just going to exacerbate the problems that already existed.”

Nellum said schools will need to think strategically about how to engage Black and brown students, who were more likely to spend the year in distance learning than their white peers who moved to private schools or other learning options.

Those families, who were disproportionately hit by the virus, have also been more hesitant to return their children to classrooms as they reopen. Schools will also need to find ways to convince private school defectors to return, he said.

For parents like Jonathan Alloy of San Francisco, that will be a lost cause.

Alloy kept his 8- and 10-year-old children in a distance learning “pod” as classrooms stayed closed but recently decided to abandon the school district and the city.

Alloy said he lost faith in the city’s school district, which has been embroiled in scandals, infighting and lawsuits, including one launched by the city attorney for the district’s failure to reopen schools more quickly. San Francisco still no timetable for returning middle and high school students to classrooms.

Because of that combined with San Francisco’s high cost of living and more expensive private school tuition, Alloy is moving to Connecticut, closer to his wife’s family.

“To leave is just crushing,” he said.

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Yes, it’s true that the left has been pushing the destruction of our culture for decades, but in the age of President Donald Trump, who brought a refreshing blend of overt patriotism and love for America with him to the Oval Office, the Marxists have stepped up their game. 

And like before, they are using our public schools to brainwash generations of kids to hate America while embracing an ideology – ‘Black Lives Matter’ – that is completely non-conducive to liberty and poison to society.

Public schools across the country have endorsed the Black Lives Matter movement and encouraged teachers, students and parents to do the same, with some schools organizing their own BLM protests, a Daily Caller News Foundation review found.

The Black Lives Matter movement has been linked to 91% of riots across the United States between May 24 and Sept. 12, according to the US Crisis Monitor, a joint project of the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project and the Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton University.

Despite the close links between the Black Lives Matter movement and riots across the country, public schools have been a consistent source of support for the movement.

Entire large school districts like the Buffalo (New York) Public School System have adopted this corrosive BLM ideology, which doesn’t really teach that all ‘black lives’ matter and instead pushes blatant Marxism (such as the destruction of the traditional family unit of father, mother, children).

The Milwaukee Public School System, meanwhile, recently held a Black Lives Matter Week of Action which included a list of demands (not ‘requests’ or ‘objectives,’ demands) that include: “Fund counselors not cops” (presumably, that one was written by someone not currently at risk of being robbed, killed, or beaten up).

“Please join Ms. Seidel and other Buckman families for a Kid’s March to show support for the memory of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter. Families are encouraged to make signs and meet in front of Buckman at 3pm on Sunday, June 7th,” the principal of Buckman Elementary, a Portland public school, told students in a newsletter.

Other school systems in other Democrat-run enclaves (because of course) have held similar events and are pushing BLM curriculum to their students. It’s overt racism, of course, because imagine if the curriculum were focused on, say, white people being more important – more equal – than blacks.

“The Black Lives Matter movement must include all of us as we support our Black and brown students, teachers, staff and families. It is not a Black problem, but a global problem,” Muncie Community Schools, an Indiana school district, states on its website.

This isn’t just harmless pandering, it’s obviously a coordinated propaganda campaign and one that is being willingly propagated and enabled, strangely enough, by white educators who don’t see any problem with holding up one ethnic group above all others, while at the same time preaching for the destruction of our cultural mores like nuclear families.

The public schools are gone. The left owns them. If you can move your kids to a private school or form home-school teaching collectives locally, do it.

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