“The lede was not that homelessness had increased,” the center’s vice president of government affairs and education policy told The Lion. “It was that our schools – for the seventh year straight – have lost upwards of 420,000 kids.”
This demographic disappearance of nearly half a million children foretells a systemic crisis for a state wrestling with high housing costs and schools failing to educate, Christensen argues.
“We’re seeing the implosion of California public-school education in real time. And I don’t think the Legislature, the governor, superintendent of public instruction or any of the powers that be are really paying that much attention.”