We have all heard about the learning loss suffered by children during the pandemic.

We are aware, as well, of the mental health, substance abuse, and obesity crises spurred on by the pandemic response.

But few people are aware that of the millions of children who were summarily kicked out of school due to ridiculous COVID fears, hundreds of thousands just quit school altogether.

Education went on pause for most; it stopped altogether for these kids. And, I would argue, much of the increase in crime in America’s cities can be traced to these kids who have left civilization behind in favor of barbarian life.

“Hundreds of thousands of students around the country disappeared from public schools during the pandemic…an estimated 230,000 students in 21 states whose absences could not be accounted for… In short, they’re missing.”https://t.co/E3nL7oEhkX

— Michael P Senger (@MichaelPSenger) February 12, 2023

She’d be a senior right now, preparing for graduation in a few months, probably leading her school’s modern dance troupe and taking art classes.

Instead, Kailani Taylor-Cribb hasn’t taken a single class in what used to be her high school since the height of the coronavirus pandemic. She vanished from Cambridge, Massachusetts’ public school roll in 2021 and has been, from an administrative standpoint, unaccounted for since then.

She is among hundreds of thousands of students around the country who disappeared from public schools during the pandemic and didn’t resume their studies elsewhere.

Kids have always had a love/hate relationship with the public schools. I certainly did.

The most attractive aspect of schools has been on the social side, not the educational. Personally I was bored to tears during class; yet school is also where you socialize with friends. It’s where you meet people. Education takes place at schools, but for many students it is the social aspects that appeal.

The government’s response to the pandemic took away all the best parts of school for students, and made the educational part of it much worse. Staring at a computer screen for hours a day while being lectured to by teachers who sound like the voices in John Fetterman’s head was excruciating for most students; hence the learning loss.

For some, opting out was the best solution. So they did.

An analysis by The Associated Press, Stanford University’s Big Local News project and Stanford education professor Thomas Dee found an estimated 230,000 students in 21 states whose absences could not be accounted for. These students didn’t move out of state, and they didn’t sign up for private school or home-school, according to publicly available data.

In short, they’re missing.

“Missing” students received crisis-level attention in 2020 after the pandemic closed schools nationwide. In the years since, they have become largely a budgeting problem. School leaders and some state officials worried aloud about the fiscal challenges their districts faced if these students didn’t come back. Each student represents money from the city, state and federal governments.

Gone is the urgency to find the students who left — those eligible for free public education but who are not receiving any schooling at all. Early in the pandemic, school staff went door-to-door to reach and reengage kids. Most such efforts have ended.

“Everyone is talking about declining enrollment, but no one is talking about who’s leaving the system and why,” said Tom Sheppard, a New York City parent and representative on the city’s Panel for Educational Policy.

“No one,” he said, “is forthcoming.”

This is classic public education: students have left the school system. That is a budget crisis, not a societal one. Public schools exist as much or more for the benefit of the bureaucrats who run them and the unions which are parasitic than for the students and the society.

Schools themselves are falling apart, both because of insane policies that predate the pandemic, and because the anti-discipline ideology being pushed by Leftists.

I can’t imagine what life is like for teachers these days. As critical I am of the public schools and of many teachers, the majority entered teaching because they want to teach. These days the bad eggs are coddled, making life hell for teachers and students alike. Ironically, the teachers’ unions have helped make things worse for teachers, not better.

The missing kids identified by AP and Stanford represent far more than a number. The analysis highlights thousands of students who may have dropped out of school or missed out on the basics of reading and school routines in kindergarten and first grade.

That’s thousands of students who matter to someone. Thousands of students who need help re-entering school, work, and everyday life.

“That’s the stuff that no one wants to talk about,” said Sonja Santelises, the chief executive officer of Baltimore’s public schools, speaking about her fellow superintendents.

Ah, the irony. A Baltimore school executive expression concern for the students. One of the most expensive and least productive school districts in the country.

The damage that has been done to children in the name of pandemic response has been incalculable. For decades the public schools have been run more for the benefit of the adults in the system than the children, and the pandemic demonstrated that for all but the most blind to see.

Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, was a prime architect of this disaster, and yet she remains a hero of the Left. Her sole focus during the pandemic was ensuring that teachers didn’t have to teach in the schools, and her sole focus since schools returned to in-person teaching has been to increase school budgets.

She was, along with bureaucrats from Washington to the most local of decision-makers, an author of this disaster. Yet she is still celebrated as a hero by many.

President Biden and the Democrats are now focused on the public school bureaucracy getting their clutches on children at ever younger ages, as if the public school bureaucracies have not proven definitively their inability to do the most basic of their jobs. Bureaucrats, counselors, and teachers insist that they know better than parents how best to ensure the mental health of students, having just dealt the largest blow to child mental health since World War II.

Unfortunately, in most places the members of the school boards are largely chosen by that very same bureaucracy. The unions organize and become political machines that swamp ordinary voters who know little about who is running.

School choice is one answer to this problem. Private schools and some charter schools didn’t close down while the public schools insisted on remote learning. Many parents who could afford it took their kids out of the public system and opted for private schools.

But the kids who need choice the most are denied it due to economic circumstance. They are the most victimized, and the least cared about by the bureaucracies whose main concern is their own budget.