Reporting Highlights

• Enrollment Plunging: Since the pandemic began, public school enrollment has declined by a million students nationwide, as many have switched to private schools and homeschooling.
• City Schools Are Closing: Rochester, New York, is shutting 11 of its 45 schools. In Seattle, parents expect 20 elementary schools will close. In Columbus, Ohio, nine schools may cease to operate.
• Unequal Effects: Closings fall especially on majority-Black schools. As top students move to private and suburban schools, special-needs students are left behind in fewer city facilities.

These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story. Were they helpful?

In the 1990s, when Liberia descended into civil war, the Kpor family fled to Ivory Coast. A few years later, in 1999, they were approved for resettlement in the United States and ended up in Rochester, New York. Janice Kpor, who was 11 at the time, jokingly wonders whether her elders were under the impression that they were moving to New York City. What she remembers most […]