It won’t get a ton of national headlines, but your local media (if you still have one) will be all over this story in the coming decade: Fewer and fewer children are attending the local public school, spurring debates over closures, consolidations, and downsizing.Nearly 50.8 million students attended a K-12 public school in the fall of 2019, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. Five years later, after some COVID-19 ups and downs, the number was below 49.4 million and is still falling.This collapse is concentrated in the Northeast, Midwest, and California. It’s also concentrated in lower grades: Kindergarten through eighth-grade enrollment fell by 5% between 2019 and 2024. First-grade enrollment across the country has shrunk by nearly 12% in a decade.
Official forecasts call for another 5% decline nationwide by 2030.
(Getty Images)
It’s no mystery why this is happening: The school closures kick-started an exodus from public schools, many of which barred their doors for a year while teachers protested returning to work, even in the spring of 2021. Parents were prohibited from entering the building until 2022 or 2023.Meanwhile, the teachers were flying transgender flags in the classroom and forcing white boys and heterosexual cisgendered girls to do privilege walks.So, some of this is the fault of the public schools. The tougher problem: We forgot to have babies for a couple of decades.The birth rate has fallen from 2.1 babies per woman in 2007 to below 1.6 in the U.S. today. The last year of our pre-iPhone, pre-financial crisis, pre-Millennials-as-adults mini baby boom was more than 18 years ago. Suri Cruise, born in 2006, is now an adult.We had more than 74 million children in the U.S. in 2020. Now, there are fewer than 71 million, and falling.The baby bust has a million massive consequences, and one of them is the collapse in school enrollment. How will we handle this?Schools will need to make a choice: Consolidate, or get good at being small. Both have their drawbacks, so get ready for some raucous town hall and school board meetings.Consolidation means that a kid who could walk to school in second grade has to get driven a town over in third grade. In high school, it means the death of old rivalries, as you become teammates with your arch-enemies. It also means longer drives to find another high school to play.Getting small means killing electives, killing football, and getting less ambitious in school plays.DEBATING IMMIGRATION LAW IS GOODBoth of these options mean laying off teachers, which the unions won’t tolerate.In short, it will be ugly. Welcome to decline.
