Students are returning to D.C.-area schools, but not as many as before

The now-7-year-old was a prekindergartner at a District charter school when the pandemic began. All of her learning was happening through a computer screen and her mother, Crystal Gray, noticed her daughter was struggling.So, with the help of a scholarship, Gray transferred Amani to a private school. But Amani fell behind. “She was lacking in reading, she was lacking in math,” said Gray, 40, a federal government worker and board member for local parent advocacy group PAVE .

Across the Washington region, other school systems have also made gains since the first two years of the public health crisis, when enrollment plummeted. But most have not yet made a full recovery. Enrollment in the District’s charter sector — composed of 69 operators that educate almost half of the city’s public-school students — has held steady. That sector has grown almost every year since the Office of the State Superintendent of Education started its citywide student count in 2007. Unlike other school systems, the number of students in charter schools has grown since the pandemic — from 43,518 during the 2019-2020 school year to 46,449 this year, an almost 7 percent jump.

Jessica Baxter, a district spokeswoman, said when campuses reopened for in-person learning officials reached out to the about 6,000 students who left the district while schools were online during the early part of the pandemic. Many of those families said they had moved out of the county or transitioned to private or home schooling, Baxter said. Roughly 1,000 of those students who left came back.Prince George’s County Public Schools follows a similar trend.

Schools across the country experienced an unprecedented decline in public school enrollment, most starkly in early grades such as kindergarten and first grade, during the fall 2020-21 school year, said Thomas Dee, a Stanford University economist and researcher. Schools who chose to offer remote only options saw the largest declines, he said.National data shows that many children still have not returned, Dee said, and “there’s a bit of mystery” of where the children have gone.

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