Liz Wheeler, Hide Your Children

Liz Wheeler, Hide Your Children: Exposing the Marxists Behind the Attack on America's Kids. 

One Dead After Driver Intentionally Plows Car Through Group of Teenagers at Westlake High School (VIDEO)

There's too much death. 

Day after day we're subsumed by "senseless" acts of violence. Damn. What next? Car control?

At the Los Angeles Times, "Driver intentionally hit Westlake High students, killing 1, after Walmart stabbing, authorities say."

The poor kid.

CHANGE: 32 States and Counting: Why Parents Bills of Rights Are Sweeping the U.S.

From Stephen Green, at Instapundit, “'The proposed laws have fueled questions about the role parents should play in their children's education. At the same time, they have fanned partisan flames, weaponizing a longstanding concept – parental rights – that academic experts and advocates alike say should not be politically charged'.”

School Mask Mandates Are Coming Back

I dread this, as mentioned previously. If my college imposes a mask mandate again this fall I'll be teaching completely online once again. Arghh! 

At Time, "Mask Mandates Are Returning to Schools as COVID-19 Cases Surge":

On April 11, public schools in Providence, R.I, made face masks optional instead of mandatory for students and teachers—celebrating the move as a “positive milestone” brought about by declining COVID-19 cases among students and community support for a more lenient policy.

Just over a month later, Providence is one of several school districts requiring masks again in response to rising COVID-19 cases, part of a nationwide spike attributed to the highly contagious Omicron subvariants.

The Providence school district tracked about 60 COVID-19 cases per day last week among staff and students—a dramatic increase from a low of about 10 cases per day in March and early April, according to district data.

“The additional mitigation layer of masking will help us manage this new COVID surge and keep more students in the classroom where they learn best,” Javier Montañez, superintendent of Providence schools, said in a statement on Monday.

Philadelphia schools also resumed a mask mandate “to help protect everyone’s health and well-being as COVID-19 case counts continue to rise in the Philadelphia area,” superintendent William Hite said in a statement. And Brookline, Mass. reinstated an indoor mask mandate in all town-owned buildings, including public schools. The decision came after public health officials compared COVID-19 cases in Brookline public schools to cases in other Massachusetts school districts that had maintained mask requirements and concluded that “a temporary reinstatement would be an important mitigation measure to limit disease spread and reduce disruptions due to student and staff absenteeism.”

Boston public schools, for example, have maintained a mask requirement. City health officials said they would recommend lifting the school mask mandate once daily COVID-19 cases in the city fall to 10 new cases per 100,000 residents. The positivity rate currently stands at 54.5 new cases per 100,000 residents.

But overall, a small percentage of schools have reinstated mask requirements thus far...

Good. Let's hope it stays that way.

 

'Broad Decline' in Enrollment at Nation's Public Schools

As I was saying at my previous entry, man it's amazing what change the pandemic has wrought.

More at the New York Times, "With Plunging Enrollment, a ‘Seismic Hit’ to Public Schools":

The pandemic has supercharged the decline in the nation’s public school system in ways that experts say will not easily be reversed. ORANGE COUNTY, Calif. — In New York City, the nation’s largest school district has lost some 50,000 students over the past two years. In Michigan, enrollment remains more than 50,000 below prepandemic levels from big cities to the rural Upper Peninsula.

In the suburbs of Orange County, Calif., where families have moved for generations to be part of the public school system, enrollment slid for the second consecutive year; statewide, more than a quarter-million public school students have dropped from California’s rolls since 2019.

And since school funding is tied to enrollment, cities that have lost many students — including Denver, Albuquerque and Oakland — are now considering combining classrooms, 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. State enrollment figures show no sign of a rebound to the previous national levels any time soon.

A broad decline was already underway in the nation’s public school system as rates of birth and immigration have fallen, particularly in cities. But the coronavirus crisis supercharged that drop in ways that experts say will not easily be reversed.

No overriding explanation has emerged yet for the widespread drop-off. But experts point to two potential causes: Some parents 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 largely remained open during the pandemic. And other families were thrown into such turmoil by pandemic-related job losses, homelessness and school closures that their children simply dropped out.

A broad decline was already underway in the nation’s public school system as rates of birth and immigration have fallen, particularly in cities. But the coronavirus crisis supercharged that drop in ways that experts say will not easily be reversed.

No overriding explanation has emerged yet for the widespread drop-off. But experts point to two potential causes: Some parents 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 largely remained open during the pandemic. And other families were thrown into such turmoil by pandemic-related job losses, homelessness and school closures that their children simply dropped out.

Now educators and school officials are confronting a potentially harsh future of lasting setbacks in learning, hardened inequities in education and smaller budgets accompanying smaller student populations.

“This has been a seismic hit to public education,” said Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University. “Student outcomes are low. Habits have been 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.”

There are roughly 50 million students in the United States public school system.

In large urban districts, the drop-off has been particularly acute. The Los Angeles Unified School District’s noncharter schools lost some 43,000 students over the past two school years. Enrollment in the Chicago schools has dropped by about 25,000 in that time frame.

But suburban and rural schools have not been immune.

In the suburbs of Kansas City, the school district of Olathe, Kan., lost more than 1,000 of its 33,000 or so students in 2020, as families relocated and shifted to private schools or home-schooling; only about half of them came back this school year.

In rural Woodbury County, Iowa, south of Sioux City, enrollment in the Westwood Community School District fell by more than 5 percent during the last two years, to 522 students from 552, in spite of a small influx from cities during the pandemic, the superintendent, Jay Lutt, said. Now, in addition to demographic trends that have long eroded the size of rural Iowa’s school populations, diminishing funding, the district is grappling with inflation as the price of fuel for school buses has soared, Mr. Lutt said.

In some states where schools eschewed remote instruction — Florida, for instance — enrollment has not only rebounded, but remains robust...

Ah, Florida. That oughta tell you something about what's going on. Public schools can work, but not so well in teachers' union-led blue states, like California.  

Still more.

Los Angeles Unified School District Bleeding Students Badly

It's amazing what a coronavirus pandemic can do to shake up nearly unchangeable public institutions. It's a big deal.

At the Los Angeles Times, "LAUSD expects enrollment to plummet by ‘alarming’ 30% in the next decade":

Enrollment in Los Angeles public schools is expected to plunge by nearly 30% over the next decade, leading to tough choices ahead about academic programs, campus closures, jobs and employee benefits — and forcing, over that time, a dramatic remake of the nation’s second-largest school system.

The predicted steep drop, which was outlined Tuesday in a presentation to the Board of Education, comes as school officials contemplate the future of Los Angeles Unified School District on several crucial fronts — including contract negotiations with the teachers union, which is seeking a 20% raise over the next two years.

District leaders also are trying to plan for the best use of historically high education funding that some experts warn is likely to be short-lived.

“There are a number of unsustainable trends,” said Supt. Alberto Carvalho, referring to declining enrollment and unstable funding. “The perfect storm is brewing.

“Los Angeles Unified is facing an alarming convergence and acceleration of enrollment decline and the expiration of one-time state and federal dollars, as well as ongoing and increasing financial liabilities.”

Carvalho warned the board that difficult conversations lie ahead and there is “not an easy path toward financial stability.”

Enrollment has been incrementally dropping in L.A. Unified since peaking at about 737,000 students 21 years ago. That long-ago overcrowding detracted from the quality and even quantity of education — as campuses operated year-round with students on staggered schedules that provided 17 fewer days of instruction per year and limited access to advanced classes.

The current enrollment is about 430,000 in kindergarten through 12th grade and is expected to fall about 3.6% a year to an estimated 309,000 nine years from now.

The pace of the decline has accelerated since the pandemic, a phenomenon officials struggle to explain. At the start of the pandemic, many families kept preschoolers and kindergarteners out of remote learning — preferring not to plant their children in front of computers for schooling. Yet the pace of decline has persisted even with the resumption of in-person classes.

Declines also are expected over the next nine years in L.A. County (19%) and the state (9%), according to data presented at Tuesday’s meeting.

Experts have offered no conclusive explanation, but factors include families moving to more affordable areas, the decline in birth rates, a drop in immigration and, until recently, the rapid growth of charter schools.

Problems related to the enrollment drop have already surfaced. A handful of campuses — despite their importance as community anchors — have closed or are projected to close. Or, the campuses have been offered to charter schools — which are not operated by the district and compete for students. Many charters are also facing enrollment challenges and some have shut down.

Having fewer students creates financial strains because state and federal funding is based primarily on enrollment. It’s difficult to reduce fixed costs related to buildings and operations as the funding base shrinks. Moreover, decreased funding makes it more challenging to manage pension costs shared by all school systems as well as separate lifetime retiree health benefits that L.A. Unified has provided to long-term employees.

In the coming years, under the current structure, there could be more L.A. Unified retirees and dependents receiving healthcare benefits than active employees, said Chief Financial Officer David Hart.

“That was never contemplated,” Hart said.

At the same time, the district has struggled this year with a shortage of qualified employees in teaching, nursing, counseling and other areas. To attract and retain such workers, it would help for the district to pay higher salaries — and to continue funding strong health benefits.

Having sufficient money to spend, it would seem, ought to be the least of the district’s challenges, given Gov. Gavin Newsom‘s announcement last week of the largest budget surplus in state history. The surplus is expected to balloon to $97.5-billion by next summer, an estimate that vastly exceeds previous projections and which is folded into a $300.6-billion budget. About 40% of the budget goes by law to grade schools and community colleges.

When including both state and federal sources, California would spend $22,850 per student in the upcoming academic year, an amount that seemed beyond any expectations not long ago...

Official's are "struggling" to explain what's happened. They know. They just can't say so publicly, as obviously more and more parents will see the light and hightail it out of there. 

Keep reading.