School enrollment has dropped by 33,000 across Tennessee amid pandemic
An empty classroom at KIPP Memphis Collegiate High remains dark as students attend the first day of virtual school due to the COVID-19 pandemic on Monday, Aug. 31, 2020. (Mark Weber/Daily Memphian file)
Laura Faith Kebede
Laura Faith Kebede is a distinguished journalist in residence at the Institute for Public Service Reporting at the University of Memphis. She leads the Institute’s Civil Wrongs project to write about historical cases of racial terror as a corps member for Report for America. You can follow her on Twitter @kebedefaith.
Marta W. Aldrich
Marta W. Aldrich is the senior statehouse correspondent at Chalkbeat Tennessee. A newswoman for The Associated Press for most of her career, Marta has covered state government, politics, business, education and other Tennessee news. She has served as news editor of United Methodist News Service and features editor of American Profile magazine. Marta is a graduate of Memphis City Schools and the University of Missouri School of Journalism.
Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn believes some families opted to home-school their children, and others enrolled their kids in private schools, especially in Memphis and Nashville. But the biggest decline was in kindergarten enrollment.
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