K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: New York City Department of Education is trying to hide the true drop in public-school enrollment.

After weeks of stonewalling, the city’s Department of Education finally had to make public the 2021 school year enrollment figures but was still shifty.

With an Oct. 31 deadline to report the numbers to the state Education Department, the DOE announced a total of 938,000 students enrolled, compared with 955,000 last year.

But that includes pre-K toddlers, even the 69,000 not in a DOE program — enrollment the city didn’t include previously. On an apples-to-apples count, the system is down to 869,000 from last year.

That’s cooking the books pretty hard. But all is proceeding as I have foreseen. “DOE flacks blame falling birth rates, but this is clearly an exodus from its schools, driven by parental dissatisfaction. Charter and private schools have rising enrollment, and even homeschooling is up. The only thing still rising at DOE schools is spending.”