LOS ANGELES — California public school enrollment has dropped for the fifth year in a row, a decline of 110,000 students as K-12 schools struggle against pandemic disruptions and a shrinking population of school-age children, among other factors.
California enrollment stood at 5,892,240, a 1.8% decline, according to state data released Monday.
Large urban districts accounted for one-third of the drop. While public school enrollment has experienced a downward trend since 2014-15, the state warned that COVID-19 disruptions have largely contributed to the most recent enrollment drops. In March 2020 the pandemic shuttered campuses in California and across the country, forcing schools into distance learning, many for nearly a year.
The fall 2021 drop follows a huge enrollment hit during the 2020-21 school year, when the state announced a decline of 160,000 students, the largest drop in 20 years.
The state Department of Education is hoping to boost enrollment in transitional kindergarten and kindergarten classes and is providing districts with support to reach families of chronically absent students during the pandemic, when absenteeism has worsened. In the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest in the nation, nearly half of all students have been chronically absent, a Times analysis found.
Statewide, the largest drops by grade level were among first-, fourth-, seventh- and ninth-graders. By race, the state saw the largest drop in enrollment among white students, a group that declined by 4.9%. They are followed by Black students at 3.6%, Asian students at 1.9% and Latino students at nearly 1%.
Already, districts such as L.A. Unified and Oakland Unified are considering school closures as part of their effort to deal with the effects of falling enrollment.
Enrollment in L.A. Unified dropped in fall 2021 by more than 27,000 students, an annual decline of close to 6%, a much steeper slide than in any recent year.
The decline is not unique to Los Angeles or California.
Enrollment dropped across the nation as families and school systems grappled with the pandemic. In Los Angeles, for instance, many worried families kept their children at home when they had a choice to return to campus.
