California Public Schools Are Losing Kids While Special Interests Profit
12th June 2025
New numbers from the California Department of Education show a continued drop in public school enrollment in the 2024–2025 school year. Despite fewer students, TK-12 education spending continues to increase, begging the question of whether taxpayers are getting value for money.
The 5.8 million students counted for the just-concluded school year represents a reduction of 31,000 from 2023–2024 and 380,000 (or 6 percent) from before the pandemic. But the drop in traditional public school enrollment is even worse than these headline numbers suggest. The totals include charter schools which added 75,000 students since the 2018–19 school year.
Netting out charters yields an enrollment drop of 8 percent, and this is despite the fact that a new grade, Transitional Kindergarten, was added during the period.
People are pulling their kids out of California public schools because they realize that their kids are getting indoctrinated in Woke ideology rather than actually educated. California would be a great place if it weren’t for the Californians.
Time to leave.