Print
The pandemic has intensified a multiyear trend of dwindling public school student enrollment statewide, causing a steep drop this year with more than a third of the decline stemming from 61,000 no-show kindergarteners.
Statewide, net enrollment in K-12 publicly funded schools in California fell by almost 3%, or 160,000 students in 2020-21, the largest drop in 20 years, according to annual data released Thursday by the California Department of Education. The drop takes into account an increase of 22,542 students attending charter schools, which enroll about one in nine students in California.
The falling numbers were spread across the state, with the four largest districts accounting for about a sixth of the decline in enrollment. Los Angeles Unified enrollment fell by 20,841 (4.76%), Long Beach by 2,003 (2.8%), San Diego by 4,270 (4.2%) and Fresno by 909 (1.3%). In the Bay Area, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties both lost more than 3% and Marin fell by 4.7%.