The San Francisco public school enrollment is plummeting as mostly white families are fleeing the district, a report at the San Francisco Chronicle said Wednesday.
According to the news report, more than 1,700 public school students have left the city’s district over the past year, with possibly a continued exodus into the start of the next academic year in the fall.
The drop in enrollment could lead to a loss in state funding of about $20 million.
The Chronicle noted a school budget report released Wednesday that found enrollment in the district at the end of the current year was 50,955, the lowest in decades, a drop that was more than three percent lower than enrollment at the end of the 2020 academic year.
A drop of 299 white students, or four percent, was the largest loss to enrollment.
The district’s kindergarten class is seeing a nearly ten percent decline from the previous year, with 3,504 children registered, a number that represents a loss of 374 children.
The Chronicle reported kindergarten applications have experienced a 55 percent drop from white families.
School district spokeswoman Gentle Blythe blamed the pandemic for the significant drop in public school enrollments.
“This year has been filled with uncertainty and challenges for families,” she said. “The pandemic has changed the circumstances of many, not just families in San Francisco. Enrollment decline can be seen in many public school districts.”
San Francisco native blogger Michelle Tandler, who describes herself as a “moderate Dem,” tweeted about the state of the San Francisco district:
The Chronicle interviewed one parent, Claire Raj, who removed her three children from the McCoppin Elementary School and enrolled them at St. Anne’s Catholic school instead.
“It’s something we had never considered, going to private school. We aren’t Catholic,” Raj said. “Once we started considering it, it seemed we just didn’t have any choice.”
The district has experienced a turbulent year in a city that has seen a rise in crime and drug overdoses during the coronavirus pandemic.
However, aside from the city’s problems, the school district has also faced a lawsuit following its woke focus on ridding its schools of the names of American leaders such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, who the board accused of being associated with slavery, oppression, and colonization. The board then had to reverse those decisions when it was discovered those characterizations were based on inaccurate claims cited at Wikipedia.
This year, San Francisco Mayor London Breed and other officials also demanded the school district’s vice president, Alison Collins, resign over 2016 tweets in which she accused Asian Americans of not being woke enough.
Collins, who refused to resign or delete the tweets, then sued the school district for $87 million after she was removed from her position.
Parents of the district also rallied in March, demanding five full days of in-classroom school instruction, countering the demands of the teachers’ union for nothing more than the hybrid model.
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