Thousands of Miami and Broward students have left the public schools amid the pandemic
While Florida educators are concerned that many students, especially those who are still learning virtually amid the pandemic, are struggling and may be at risk of failing, tens of thousands of children statewide have left the state public school system altogether.
A top Republican state lawmaker said last week that nearly 90,000 public school students in Florida are “missing,” meaning they haven’t shown up for class either in person or online during this school year. Nearly 20,000 of these children are missing from Miami-Dade and Broward school districts, the largest districts in the state and the fourth- and sixth-largest districts in the country.
“We have a moral obligation not to let these children fall through the cracks,” state Rep. Chris Sprowls, the Republican speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, wrote in a letter Thursday to all 75 public school district superintendents. Sprowls represents the Pinellas County area.
With schools’ funding based, in part, on the number of students attending a school, a significant reduction in students could lead to major budget cutbacks for public schools.
Miami-Dade public schools enrollment is down about 10,500 students for the 2020-2021 school year, compared with the previous year, Daisy Gonzalez-Diego, the district’s chief communications and community engagement officer, said Friday.
Students going to private schools, are being home schooled or left the area
However, school officials say the majority of these students are not “missing.” Most either transferred to private school, are being home schooled or left the county, state, or the country during the pandemic.
“We actually have pretty good sense in terms of where they are,” Miami-Dade Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said in an interview Tuesday.
He said about 76% of the students who left Miami-Dade public schools now either attend private schools or have left the county or state.
The true count of students with whom the district has had no contact, and whose whereabouts were unknown at the beginning of the school year, was about 1,700 children, according to Carvalho.
Shortly after the start of the school year, district officials began tracking down these students. They called last known phone numbers, visited homes, and collaborated with the Miami-Dade Housing Authority, as many of the students on the list live in subsidized housing.
“There is no doubt a problem here that has been exacerbated deeply, created and exacerbated deeply, by the coronavirus crisis that we’ve gone through,” Carvalho said.
Miami-Dade brought back about 700 students to school
Their efforts paid off, he said, and school officials brought back about 700 to 800 students. So, according to Carvalho, the actual number of children not in school and which the district has not been able to account for is about 1,000.
“There is a significant drop of students from last year from this year, but the vast majority of those students, we know where they are,” he said.
Speaking anecdotally, Carvalho said many of the missing students’ families may have been children of undocumented workers and left the county, state or even the country.
“For a whole host of reasons, whether it was immigration fear, economic reasons, that they have relocated or may have in fact left the country altogether,” he said.
Broward has about 8,500 missing students
In Broward, about 8,500 students have not reported to either brick-and-mortar class or remote learning, according to Broward Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie.
However, unlike in Miami-Dade, he said his district does not have a specific breakdown of what happened to those students — did they drop out of school? Did their families move out of the district? Did they transfer to private or charter schools?
“It’s a mix,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “And, we don’t know the magnitude of what that is. We’d just be speculating.”
He’s concerned enrollment has decreased by such a high number — almost 10% of the students who’ve dropped out of the public school system statewide.
“And, that’s going to have a significant impact on the district,” Runcie said. “If we don’t recover any of the 8,500, I tell people that’s the equivalent of an entire school zone. That’s a high school, feeder middle school and an elementary school. Gone.”
He believes the majority who have not come back are in elementary school or kindergarten.
“We know a big chunk of it is parents deciding to keep their children out of school, especially in the younger grade levels. They normally don’t do well in an online learning environment without a lot of parental support and supervision, so we hope some of that turns around. But, there’s absolutely going to be some loss,” Runcie said.
For students in earlier grades who didn’t attend class this year, especially kindergartners, Runcie said he is less concerned about their academic future, noting many parents hold their children back a year before placing them in school, and historically, those children typically do well as they progress through high school.
Older students who drop out have a much tougher time getting back on track.
“It becomes a lot more difficult when you have a fourth-grader or an eighth-grader or a 10th-grader who’s disengaged and habitually truant and has all sorts of other issues,” he said. “When they lose time, it’s a crisis. And, that’s the urgency of what we’re trying to address now.”
About 1 in 4 students are struggling in Broward schools
Broward is already facing challenges with a large number of students who are at risk of not meeting academic expectations as a result of the disruptions from the pandemic. He said about 59,000 students out of the total student population of around 204,000 — or slightly more than 1 in 4 students fall into this category.
He cited this number in the past as a reason behind the district’s push to get more students — and teachers — back into the physical classroom. He said these children, close to 90% of whom are Black and Hispanic who come from low-income families, learn better with a teacher in front of them.
“It’s the most vulnerable being impacted to the greatest extent possible. These are kids who may have housing insecurity, food insecurity. They may not have conditions at home where they can focus on remote learning. They need to be in school. That’s why we need to keep our schools open,” Runcie said.
Home schooling has increased
While public schools have seen student enrollments decline, the number of students being home schooled has grown significantly, records show.
According to data from Florida Virtual School, a publicly funded online home school program, enrollment between July 1 and Sept. 30 for the school’s part-time flexible scheduled courses increased 57% to more than 231,100 students, or about 100,000 more pupils over the year before, said spokeswoman Tania Clow.
Funding concerns
Along with worries about the well-being of the children who have dropped out of the public school system, school districts face a serious financial penalty if the students don’t report to class next school year.
The state allocates funds to schools on a per-pupil basis based on the estimated enrollment submitted by districts the year before. When thousands of the projected students turned out to be no-shows because of the continuing pandemic, Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran issued an executive order allowing districts to keep the estimated per-pupil funding allocated last year.
Sprowls said in his letter this will likely change next year. He and his fellow Republican legislators plan to change the formula to allocate money based on actual enrollment.
Sprowls said the executive order allowed districts to keep a collective $700 million this year “over and above what would otherwise be permitted under law.”
“The Florida House strongly encourages you to work with every available state and local resource, including social service agencies and law enforcement, to locate these missing children, and, if they are still residents of Florida, ensure they are properly enrolled in a K-12 education option allowed under Florida law,” Sprowls said in his letter.
Carvalho said he is concerned about losing the money the district received this year, but he also didn’t expect that the state would allow districts to keep money based on non-existent enrollment numbers. Miami-Dade’s enrollment is around 254,000 students, down from more than 265,000 in the previous school year.
“So, we received a reprieve this year, which was very welcomed, and we will work through the legislative process, but I think anyone in the state that would expect a full second year of reprieve due to a loss of [full-time students], that’s not necessarily realistic,” he said. “There is concern, but there is a degree of reality that we approach this issue with.”
The story originally reported that 76% of lost Miami-Dade County public schools enrollment this academic year transferred to private schools. The percentage also includes those students who left the county or state.
This story was originally published February 17, 2021 at 5:30 AM.
