Back in July, I predicted the pandemic would push families out of public schools and into homeschooling, private, and charter schools. Now there’s data to back up that claim. In our local district, elementary enrollment is down 12% from last year, and 7% down district-wide. 1/7

Our local district recently released enrollment numbers for each school, indicating how many students opted for in-person instruction and how many opted for fully online. 2/7 https://www.mccsc.edu/cms/lib/IN01906545/Centricity/Domain/4/Online%20and%20In-Person%20Number%20of%20Students%20per%20Building%2009022020.pdf

Those online/in-person numbers tell an interesting story (especially in terms of how they vary across schools, ranging from 19% to 48% fully online), but that’s a story for another thread 3/7

Comparing the newly announced numbers to last year’s enrollment for each school, I estimated the number of students each school has lost this year. And enrollment is down 12% at the elementary level, 2% in middle/high-schools, and 7% overall. 4/7
https://inview.doe.in.gov/ 

Without those students, our district will lose $4.6M in state funding. As I argued in @nytopinion, those opt-outs will also “undermine the public’s confidence in the quality of public education and the necessity of funding it as a public good.” 5/7 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/opinion/coronavirus-school-reopen-devos.html

Of course, I can’t blame families for opting out. The pandemic is still raging. Public schools haven’t been given the money needed to open safely (e.g., with enough teachers/space for small in-person classes). And online learning is a challenge for many students and families. 6/7

The real failure here is in the hands of the politicians who’ve refused to take the steps necessary to stop the virus and who, even more despicably, have treated this pandemic as a political and financial opportunity and not as a serious threat. 7/7