Jeff Childers

the experts are baffled yet again! More baffling. The New York Times published an article this week headlined, “With Plunging Enrollment, a ‘Seismic Hit’ to Public Schools.” Uh oh.

The alarming sub-headline reads, “The pandemic has supercharged the decline in the nation’s public school system in ways that experts say will not easily be reversed.” Supercharged. Not easily reversed.

But … why would you WANT to reverse it? Never mind.

The Times reported that America’s public schools have lost at least 1.2 million students since 2020, and the data shows “no sign of a rebound” to previous national levels any time soon. What do the experts think about this? The Times glumly reported, “No overriding explanation has emerged yet for the widespread drop-off.”

Baffled.

What they DO know is that bigger cities have seen worse student losses, but some entire states, like Florida, seem to be going the other way, for some reason. The NYT said in “Florida, for instance — enrollment has not only rebounded, but remains robust.” And, “private schools have also seen some gains in enrollment.” It’s such a mystery! Nothing about it makes any sense.

Even more oddly, California has been hit the hardest. Late in the article, the Times momentarily muses about a disappointing survey last month showing lots of Orange County parents who said they’d pull their kids from public school next year if covid vaccines become mandatory. I wonder if this could have anything to do with … nah.

Can anyone help these poor experts figure out what might be causing these horrible losses to public school funding, I mean horrible losses to free educational opportunities? Because the Times thinks this is really bad. It said, “educators and school officials are confronting a potentially harsh future of lasting setbacks in learning, hardened inequities in education and SMALLER BUDGETS[.]”

Not that. Not smaller budgets. Please, say it isn’t so.