K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: California public school enrollment spirals, dropping by 110,000 students this year.

California public school enrollment has dropped for the fifth year in a row — a decline of more than 110,000 students — as K-12 campuses struggle against pandemic disruptions and a shrinking population of school-age kids amid wide concerns that the decrease is so large that educators can’t account for the missing children. . . .

While public school enrollment has experienced a downward trend since 2014-15, state education officials largely blamed the pandemic for the plummeting numbers over the last two years. This year’s decline, which includes charter schools, follows a huge enrollment hit during the 2020-21 school year, when the state experienced the largest drop in 20 years, with 160,000 students. In March 2020 the pandemic closed campuses in California and across the country, forcing schools into distance learning, many for nearly a year.

“One of the questions that we just have to come back to is, just where are those kids?” said Heather J. Hough, executive director of the Policy Analysis for California Education. “We don’t have satisfying data to answer that question.”

There was some expectation that enrollment would continue to fall, as the state faces declining residential population and birth rates, and out-of-state migration, said Julien Lafortune, research fellow at Public Policy Institute of California. But there was also hope in the education community that enrollment would show signs of rebounding from last school year’s massive loss.

Maybe the grooming stuff is bad for business.

Related: Homeschool surge continues despite schools reopening, widely available vaccines. “The coronavirus pandemic ushered in what may be the most rapid rise in homeschooling the U.S. has ever seen. Two years later, even after schools reopened and vaccines became widely available, many parents have chosen to continue directing their children’s educations themselves.”

Also: Homeschooling surge across the U.S. continues despite schools reopening: The rising numbers have cut into public school enrollment in ways that affect future funding and renewed debates over how closely homeschooling should be regulated.

Plus: City schools bracing for budget realities of 120K enrollment drop-off.

All is proceeding as I have foreseen. Including the effort to limit homeschooling when it starts to threaten the graft.