Enrollment at California’s public schools continued to drop for the sixth straight year, with a loss of nearly 40,000 students between this year and last. The situation was especially dire in the six-county Bay Area, with declines nearly double that of the state.
The decline this year was less than half of what schools saw during the 2021-22 academic year. But in the Bay Area — a region with some of the highest cost of living in the state — decreases in student population were much sharper. After years of plummeting enrollment, experts say it’s clear that the ripple effects of the pandemic are far from over. Of the 20 largest school districts in the Bay Area, only one —— recorded an increase in its student growth since before the pandemic. All other large districts saw drops between 3.7% at Mt. Diablo Unified, and 22.4% at Cupertino Union, compared with Dublin’s increase of 4%.
“The pandemic exacerbated lots of issues that we already had in our schools — inequitable treatment, inequitable outcomes, staffing shortages, and attendance challenges,” said Hough. “Our schools are still under a lot of pressure, and even though it’s not necessarily the pandemic anymore, we’re still dealing with that longtail of pandemic aftereffects.”