California Schools Seeing Fewer Kids As Birth Rates Fall
Declining enrollment in California has been an issue since before the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is an indicator of some of the issues facing the state, including falling birth rates, high housing costs pushing families out of the state and lasting impacts from the pandemic
On top of this, lower enrollment has major financial and social consequences for California's public schools.
In the academic year 2024-25, California schools had a total of 5,806, 221 students enrolled, according to data released by California's Department of Education on Wednesday. This is a 7 percent decrease from the 6,235,520 recorded a decade ago.
There is also more than a 20 percent difference between the size of the number of students leaving school (488,295) and those starting it (384,822).
Stanford University education professor and economist Thomas Dee told The Los Angeles Times: "These losses largely reflect the fact that there are now substantially fewer school-age children in the state.
"This demographic decline is due to both lower birth rates and net migration of families with children out of California - e.g., due to housing costs and the growth of work-from-home employment."
Indeed, California, like much of the rest of the United States, has a declining birth rate.
In 2023, the most recent year for which the California Department of Public Health records birth data, there were 400,129 births. This is down almost 100,000 births from a decade ago, when there were 494,392 births.
The state's fertility rate was 49 per 100,000 residents in 2023-down from 60.6 per 100,000 residents in 2013.
However, California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond stressed that there has been growth in transitional kindergarten (TK) enrollment-a new grade that serves four-year-olds.
Thomas Dee also spoke about "the students who fled public schools at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic who still have not returned."
"The public school enrollment losses also reflect an enduring increase in private and home-school enrollment," he added.
Tony Thurmond said: "While we have more work to do, the dramatic growth in TK is inspiring and shows that providing rigorous and quality programs can be a key ingredient to bringing more families back to our schools."
It remains to be seen whether enrollment will continue to decline in California and what impacts that will have.
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