California’s public school system lost seven times more students than projections predicted for this school year.
The California Department of Education published a report this week revealing that 75,000 fewer students were enrolled in the Golden State’s government schools this year. That’s a 1.3-percent drop. A big percentage of the bleeding came from Los Angeles County schools, which shed 32,953 students.
The Los Angeles Times noted that the big enrollment reduction may result in shuttered schools and fewer employees.
Why the Decline?
The official reasons for the steep decrease include declining birth rates, housing costs, and “aggressive federal efforts to deport undocumented immigrants,” the Times reported.
It appears that most reports have left out at least two other factors that likely contributed to the enrollment decline.
First, no other state experienced a larger exodus in 2024 and 2025 than the Golden State. About 600,000 people left California; the net outmigration during that period comes to about 229,000 people.
California has become expensive, violent, dirty, and increasingly tyrannical. Democrats long ago seized control of the political apparatus there. And they’ve used their power to implement a series of policies that have run people out.
In addition to refusing to pay more taxes for less, some people have left because of the dangerous woke policies that endanger children, especially the intense LGBTQ indoctrination so prevalent in the government school system. Simply put, California is not a family-friendly state. In 2023, Republican State Senator Scott Wilk said during debate on a “transgender” bill, “If you love your children, you need to flee California.” Undoubtedly, parents have taken his advice.
Good News
The news only gets better. The downward trend of public school enrollment is occurring in 39 other states, with Hawaii, New Hampshire, and New York leading the way. Anytime there is a decline in government school attendance, that bodes well for the future of America.
Adding to the good news is that homeschooling is on an upward trajectory. A recent report from the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) indicates that homeschooling is here to stay.
About 1,400,000 children were being homeschooled in 2003. By 2021, during the peak of Covid madness, that number had shot up to 3,751,000. Today, NHERI estimates that about 3.408 million students are enrolled in homeschooling, suggesting the trend is here to stay.
We encourage readers who are curious about the dangers of government schools and would like more details on alternatives to visit the John Birch Society’s Save Our Children action page here.
