Apparently public schools are having a bit of trouble post covid.
Now, if you are a parent, maybe you've noticed this,
maybe it's been the talk of your school board meetings and things like that.
But I hadn't actually seen this, I'm gonna run through a few different cities
because the enrollment declines are very widespread in getting pretty high.
In New York City, the nation's largest school district,
they've lost 50,000 students over the past two years.
In Michigan, enrollment remains more than 50,000 below prepandemic levels.
Statewide more than a quarter-million public school students have dropped from
California's rolls since 2019.
And the population continues to grow by the way.
So you'd expect it to be moving in the opposite direction.
And the issue here is not just that there's fewer students in
the school systems, but that of course the number of students,
you have influences the funding that you have.
So, if those numbers are going down, then the amount of funding you have,
the level of services you're able to offer will necessarily go down too.
We've mentioned a few cities, I wanna let that this is very widespread.
So, in Fremont, they're apparently having any enrollment declines too.
That's also in California and Colorado,
the Aurora public schools board considers whether to close two elementary schools
like consolidating the students to a lower number of schools.
New York City is gonna be dealing with budget cuts as well.
As we said, in north Carolina two Wilson schools could permanently close due to
their age and also under enrollment.
True two and in New Jersey and Middletown,
they have this prep school that they're experiencing a dramatic enrollment drop.
Apparently, altogether public schools in America have lost 1.2 million
students since 2020.
And of course there's a lot of different potential influences on this.
It could be people moving from one area to another.
It could be people not feeling comfortable sending their kids back to school post
covid, it could be students who had a couple of years of home school and
continuing.
We talked about that a few weeks ago.
It could be states that have been incentivizing non public schools,
private schools and charter schools and things like that.
But there's a lot going into this chair and I know that you have a kid in school,
is this something that you've been aware of?
You're muted by the way.
>> So yes, I've noticed it here, but I didn't notice this degree, so we'll see so
many changes and
happening with these numbers with school but my kids switched schools as well.
And part of it was just the way the makeup of the schools approaching things.
Yes, there was the health issues that were happening there,
there's certain teachers that there was a dramatic drop in teachers as well.
But I think once the remote learning happened and people were seeing some of
the struggles that happened, others started trying to find other ways to go
about their kids education cuz a lot of folks didn't have the time energy or
space to really help their children at home.
So they start collecting, this is again, just some personal viewers,
things that I've seen parents do around us.
They start collecting their kids in little groups and just doing homeschool groups.
So it wasn't just solo by myself and these are folks who had the means to do it.
So they would hire a teacher to teach their six kids or so,
and that I'm not sure that can't be as widespread enough that a quarter million
kids from the LAUSD left cuz there's plenty of issues when it comes to kids
that need to be in school when it comes to cuz there's no other options.
So I didn't know it was this widespread, but
definitely some of those were the driving forces behind it.
People saw a different, a bit of a grass is greener on this approach and
they said I have the means, let's go ahead and do it.
Now, when it comes to folks who don't have those means,
this just kind of appears to be switching schools, changing.
Maybe they moved because of those different circumstances.
But again, we lost a million people, how many kids, parents are no longer here and
we don't know where they've had to go?
>> That's true, yeah,
we talked previously about the number of pandemic orphans effectively.
The right has no interest in that, they don't acknowledge that as they don't
acknowledge basically anything about the pandemic.
But this is huge and look depending on where the kids are going, it's impossible
for me to say as a non expert exactly what the long term ramifications are for that.
If they're being homeschooled, that's gonna have certain effects,
if it's more private school enrollment.
I don't know but I will say as someone who went through public schools,
I believe that there is value to public schools.
There's particularly value to well funded public schools.
I think that would be a great experiment for
our country to eventually try at some point.
We've never really done it, but I think that there is value to it.
And the replacements might do well in certain metrics, but I hope that this
is not the beginning of a trend that I know the right would be gleeful over.
They've been wanting to kill public education for literally decades and
they've been working at the federal and the state level to do so.
The pandemic,
which they helped to exacerbate might be helping them along that way.
But I think there is value to learning in this sort of environment.
I think it's important and I hope that there are responsible experts that
are looking into this and trying to figure out to what extent it can be mitigated.
>> Yeah. Children have been affected.
A lot of them aren't aren't the same since this whole thing.
And that's one Truth.
And I think this reaction to it.
Yeah. Yeah. And that's something that we're gonna be dealing with for
the rest of our lives.
By the way.
An entire generation of kids whose education has been massively affected.
Whether it was,, kids who are just entering into school kids whose
high school experience is gonna be dramatically different.
College was going to be very different from millions and millions of people.
And they are going to be affected for the rest of their lives.
Like with long covid, even if,, a high percentage of people are starting
to say in polls of the pandemics over the effects of it very much are not, mm hmm.