in California there are not more students.. all tiers of schools show falling enrollments, year after year. Except community colleges, where they have discovered that more than 15% of all students are ghost enrolled.

-- California K-12 public school enrollment fell by 74,961 students (a 1.3% decline) for the 2025-26 school year, marking the largest drop since the pandemic. This loss was significantly higher than the state’s Department of Finance projection of only 10,000 students.

The decline is driven by lower birth rates and a reduction in immigration, with the latter exacerbated by families fearing enforcement actions. Los Angeles County accounted for nearly half of the state's total loss, losing 32,953 students, largely due to a decrease in newcomer students within the LAUSD.

Private schools saw a steeper drop of 6.6%, while homeschooling declined by 3.7%. The enrollment drop is causing budget deficits, leading to staff layoffs, program cuts, and potential school closures. Hispanic students experienced the largest numeric loss (48,064), while white students saw the largest percentage decline (2.68%). English learner enrollment fell by 8.2%, partly due to reclassification and partly due to out-migration.

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reassess_blind 4 hours ago | parent [-]

That's surprising. Surely there are still more than there were 30 years ago?

	▲	MLR 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		From glancing at the numbers it looks pretty similar, but there's been a huge drop in births in California in the last 10-20 years so it's probably the last few years where that will be true. Peak birth year was 1990 after booming through the 80s, births started falling off a cliff after 2008 and last year there were about the same number of births as in 1980 despite the population increasing by 80%.