The New York Times - The Pandemic Exodus: Kindergarten Enrollment Drops

As the pandemic upended life in the United States, more than one million children who had been expected to enroll in these schools did not show up, either in person or online. The missing students were concentrated in the younger grades, with the steepest drop in kindergarten — more than 340,000 students, according to government data.

I met Gine Ramirez and her daughter Bonnylin Sapp in the summer of 2021. Ramirez enrolled her daughter in a virtual charter school because public schools were closed and she was unsure about her neighborhood school in Philadelphia.