Big-City Public Schools Struggle with Declining Enrollment Post-Pandemic

Experts say it’s time for education leaders, especially in big cities such as Los Angeles and New York, to acknowledge that declining enrollment in assigned public schools is here to stay.

New York City public schools are projecting enrollment losses of 30,000 students this fall — a decline Mayor Eric Adams has called a “massive hemorrhaging of students.”

The drop in enrollment is part of a larger trend that accelerated during the pandemic: NYC schools lost 43,000 students in the 2020-21 school year, a 4 percent drop from the year before....