Today is Wednesday, May 18, 2022. One of the enduring effects of the pandemic is the loss of public school students in the last two years across the country. This phenomenon is covered in a New York Times front-page article in today’s paper by Shawn Hubler entitled “Public Schools Have Lost Over a Million Students in Two Years.” In the New York City school system, the nation’s largest school district has lost some 50,000 students over the past two years. Some of the lasting effects of this new reality could lead some cities to consider combining classrooms (thus possibly leading to more overcrowding), laying off teachers, or shutting down entire schools. “All together, America’s public schools have lost at least 1.2 million students since 2020, according to a recently published national survey.”

The main reasons for this slide in student enrollment have to do with rates of birth and immigration that have fallen, particularly in cities. The latter slide patently flies in the face of the disgusting far right that inveighs against illegal migrants crossing our borders to “invade” this country. These statistics clearly counter that argument here. Two other potential causes for this widespread drop-off might be reflected in the number of parents who became so fed up with remote instruction or mask mandates that they started home-schooling their children or sending them to private or parochial schools that remained largely open during the pandemic. Another more distressing reason for this slide in public schoolchildren is the number of other families that “were thrown into such turmoil by pandemic-related job losses, homelessness, and school closures that their children simply dropped out.”

What is obvious about this diminishment of public school students is that school funding is directly tied to enrollment numbers in most states and when you have fewer students, you will have budget shortages. Reflecting on this two-year change to enrollment numbers, Marguerite Rosa, director of the Economics Lab at Georgetown University, has stated, “This has been a seismic hit to public education. Student outcomes are low. Habits have broken. School finances are really shaken. We shouldn’t think that this is going to be like a rubber band that bounces back to where it was before.”

In some cases, “some families are leaving their local public schools not because they are abandoning the system altogether, but because they have moved to other parts of the country that are more affordable.”

One such family described in the article is the family of Jaime Parish and her three children who live in Anaheim Hills, California. Her three children left their former class as the year began. Becoming homeless in 2020, Parish shuffled almost a year among motels and relatives and, eventually, her three children stopped attending school altogether. Ms. Parish then experienced a series of setbacks in which her mother got COVID-19, her car broke down, and a plan to move to Bakersfield fizzled. At one point, Parish was camped under a bridge near Disneyland. This story is not unique among countless other families that suffered acute hardships since the pandemic entered the scene in March 2020. Before the pandemic, however, enrollment had been declining overall in California, a function of high housing costs, lower birthrates, and restricted immigration.

What I find puzzling is the number of California school districts that would scale back imposing new pandemic restrictions because of the perceived hit on enrollment. This bizarre phenomenon is borne by the utterances of a mother, Lisa Rogers, 38, who bluntly reported, “We love our school. But if my children are forced to wear masks again, or if I’m forced to vaccinate them against my will, I’m going to pull them out and home-school.” Here we go again with that segment of society that has perennially pushed back on pandemic safety measures, even though there is a new surge almost everywhere with more and more people testing positive for the virus.

So there we have another negative side effect of this pandemic that might not return to pre- pandemic numbers anytime soon.

I would write about the COVID alert status in our city that has been upgraded by our new mayor who believes it’s not necessary to impose new mandates, but I don’t have time since it’s getting late here.

The reason for this is that Elliot and I picked up our California friend, “Megan,” at JFK Airport after 5, where we drove to Astoria to have a lovely dinner outside at Bahari Estiatorio Restaurant, a Greek eatery, on Broadway. Then we drove her to Manhattan where she was staying with her friend on 89th Street, on the East Side.

So I hope to be here much sooner tomorrow where I can be more relaxed.

Stay safe and be well.