Folks just aren’t birthing as many babies in California as they used to.This has serious ramifications for dinosaurs like me, with Social Security and all, but also for one of California’s mightiest industries: education, particularly K-12 education.
The Bay Area — Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano and Sonoma counties — has fared better. Enrollment there has dropped 7%, and will shrink another 8% by 2031, for a total decline of 15%. “State policy efforts to address enrollment declines will need to carefully consider regional implications,” write the PPIC’s Julien Lafortune and Emmanuel Prunty. “Where declines have already happened, continued losses may cause more difficulties; by 2031, some regions of the state will have experienced 20-year declines of 20% or greater, amplifying pressures to close schools and find other cost-saving measures.
The researchers found that the losses are concentrated in the earliest grades — kindergarten and first, suggesting that pandemic-era shifts away from public schools may persist.