MADISON, Wis. — Student enrollment in both public and private schools have taken a major hit following the start of the Coronavirus pandemic.
The Wisconsin Policy Forum reports public school enrollment declines were almost ten times more in the 2020-2021 school year than in previous years.
Forum researchers concluded drops in enrollment were mostly concentrated in Pre-K.
“Maybe their child was on the bubble of being able to attend school or not chose to keep their child home an additional year rather than send them into school during a pandemic,” said Wisconsin Policy Forum Research Director Jason Stein.
However, not all parents are choosing to delay their child’s schooling. Instead, some are opting to send their kids to virtual charter schools.
Wisconsin Virtual Academies doubled their enrollment numbers in the 2020-2021 school year.
“All of those things that really other districts were scrambling to provide resources for kids could get started right away,” said the academy’s Head of Schools Dr. Sar Cutler. “They didn’t have the learning loss that other school districts had.”
For other parents, public, private, and even virtual schools still weren’t the right choice for their kids; they opted for homeschooling which saw a 47% increase in enrollment.
“A lot ended up doing the homeschooling because the online sitting of your kid in front of Zoom the majority of the day just did not work,” Madison Area Homeschoolers Administrator Michelle Yoo said.
“They said, ‘hey we’re already taking care of them at home anyways it’s not like they’re going to school.”
Membership to the group’s Facebook page went from averaging about 50 new members a year to 400 new members post-pandemic.
“People saying that they don’t want their kids going to school with masks on,” Yoo added. “We also get people saying they don’t want their kids going to school where other people don’t have their mask on.”
RELATED: State officials recommend school districts track COVID-19 vaccinations, but not all are
This major reshuffling between in-person learning, virtual learning, and homeschooling could have some major lasting impacts for public schools.
Stein said districts that are experiencing a drop in student enrollment would likely face drops in revenue limits and state aid moving forward.
State funding formulas for public schools are heavily reliant upon enrollment numbers–formulas that don’t account for the pandemic.
“That’s the challenge is that you have this disruption in our funding system but at least for the long term you have the same needs for the students and the schools themselves,” he added.
According to Forum researchers at this point, it’s hard to tell, with the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, if these enrollment trends will change anytime soon or what implications they might have on student learning.
“I think there’s a lot of reason to be concerned that student progress has been affected but theirs not the kind of data that we would like to have about that,” Stein said.
Forum data shows national enrollment patterns follow a similar pattern, Nationwide school enrollment has seen its largest decline since 2000.
COPYRIGHT 2021 BY CHANNEL 3000. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.
