APS enrollment continues to plummet, pandemic or no

The following chart from APS says a lot about the State of the District itself, but also about the stagnant population of New Mexico which is seeing overall declines in the number of young residents.

The REAL student population declined by 5,200 (including two students in the Gessing household) but the media helpfully attributed “only” 4,000 of that decline to COVID. Of course, even that is an oversimplification as many students (including ours) left the District because of the State’s political handling of COVID, not COVID itself.

Oddly enough, APS which will likely see further per-pupil budget increases managed to whine about the budget impact of the number of students fleeing their schools. There is no public discussion of allowing the money to follow the students.

Furthermore, this drop was hardly unexpected. If the APS School Board was interested in turning this sorry situation around, perhaps they should have added some kind of incentive to that effect to his contract.