A teacher gives a lecture from her empty classroom at the Bob Graham Education Center in Miami, Aug. 31, 2020.

Photo: cristobal herrera-ulashkevich/Shutterstock

Students and families have paid a high price for pandemic school shutdowns. Now a study shows that school districts and teachers unions may pay a financial price for keeping children out of classrooms.

K-12 enrollment nation-wide declined by nearly 3%, or about 1.3 million students, over the past two school years, according to the report by the American Enterprise Institute. Notably, enrollment dropped more in 2020-2021 in districts with the most remote learning (3.2%) than those with the most in-person learning (2.1%). Many parents decided to home-school their children rather than have them stare at screens all day.

Districts that returned to in-person instruction sooner saw enrollments rebound faster, while those that stayed remote longest saw further declines. Those that remained remote longest suffered a net decline of 4.4% since the start of the pandemic, while districts that were most in-person recovered about 1% in the second year and declined only 1.2% overall.

Enrollment also fell more in districts in counties that voted for Joe Biden (3.8%) than in those that favored Donald Trump (2%), perhaps because conservatives put a higher priority on keeping schools open. “Districts’ COVID caution or assertiveness had more to do with communities’ shared ideological priors than COVID case rates in the county,” writes AEI fellow Nat Malkus.

Though not discussed in the report, one reason for enrollment declines is state migration. California public schools have lost more than 270,000 students over the pandemic years, and Los Angeles Unified School District’s superintendent recently said that one reason is parents leaving for states like Florida “because of political ideology and lower taxes.” We wonder what California Gov. Gavin Newsom thinks about this admission of reality as he runs ads trashing Florida.

These enrollment losses will hurt districts financially as they lose state and federal per-pupil funding—perhaps as much as $1.1 billion for New York City and $680 million for Los Angeles, Mr. Malkus estimates. Some districts, such as Oakland, Calif., are having to close schools despite their windfall of federal pandemic dollars.

The result may be layoffs and fewer dues-paying union members. Union chiefs must have noticed because they are running ads on local radio in California promoting public schools. The pandemic was a political awakening for parents across the country, and teachers unions may come to regret their insistence on keeping schools shut down as much as parents do.