School districts that reported losses in enrollment last year are seeing similar trends for a second straight year, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause problems in public schools, an NPR investigation has found.
Their research from more than 600 districts in 23 states and Washington, D.C. found that only a few districts have returned to pre-pandemic enrollment numbers. Most of those school districts are now reporting another year of declines.
New York City's school enrollment dropped by about 38,000 students in 2020 and another 13,000 in 2021. Similar trends appeared in Chicago and Los Angeles as well. Chicago schools lost 14,000 students in 2020 and another 10,000 in 2021, while LA school enrollment dropped 17,000 students in 2020 and almost 9,000 in 2021.
Public school enrollment dropped by 3% during the 2019-20 school year, after a decade of small gains. Most of the decline was caused by COVID-19 disruptions and occurred in early grades, as some families opted their children out of remote learning in pre-K and kindergarten.
However, private and parochial enrollment has rebounded this year. About 10% of all students in the United States are enrolled in private and parochial schools. The National Association of Independent Schools comprises private, non-parochial schools reported a net enrollment growth of 1.7% over the last two years.
Private preschool enrollment was one of the biggest jumps in the NAIS report, showing that enrollment grew 21% this past fall and is up a net growth of 6% over two years.
Charter schools saw enrollment increase about 7% in 2020, but it's now reported that their growth is mostly flat from last year.
COVID safety protocol differences between public schools and private or charter schools is the main cause for this shift in enrollment.
"We have people in our community that are anti-mask. I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm just saying, they have their right to self-identify that way," Jon Dean, the schools superintendent in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, said. "We exist in a county that has a mask mandate. So we know we have families that are not attending right now because masks are mandatory in our school district."
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