Have the wokesters finally reached a tipping point?
Leftists of multiple stripes have been making public schools horrible places, and now students are bolting.
In California, that's making news. According to the Associated Press:
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — California public schools have experienced a sharp decline in enrollment this year as the pandemic forced millions into online school, according to data made public Thursday.
The drop came as the state's school districts dawdled in bringing children back to the classroom, making California one of the slowest in the country to reopen schools.
The California Department of Education data shows that the number of students at K-12 schools dropped by more than 160,000 this academic year, most of them at the K-6 level, to a total of 6 million.
The drop is by far the biggest decline in years and represents the clearest picture yet of the pandemic's devastating toll on California public schools.
"The annual snapshot of fall enrollment shows a sharp one-year decline as the state and nation grappled with a deadly pandemic that disrupted all aspects of public education," the education department said in a statement.
But it's actually happening all over. Detroit, New York City, Baltimore, D.C., Austin, Tucson, Minneapolis, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Janesville, Wisconsin, Chautauqua County, upstate New York, plus the entire states of New Jersey, Iowa, Vermont, Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, Hawaii, North Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Washington, Virginia, and quite likely all of the others are reporting public school enrollment drops. I didn't have time to finish going through the list.
In California, it's white students who are bolting most. The AP reports that they constitute 22% of school enrollment but account for half of the exits. They're moving on to private schools, whose enrollments are up, or to homeschooling, which is available to anyone with a literate and motivated parent. Or else just moving to a better state. It suggests that poor black and Latino kids, who form far larger demographic groups within the California districts, might just be not bolting because economically, they can't. They may have a parent who has to work in a low-salary service industry job or else live in a household with no literacy skills to facilitate homeschooling from the adults. Based on other factors, to be cited below, they'd get out if they could, too.
And that's, according to press reports, all because of the pandemic — which is bee ess right there.
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