Good morning. Welcome to Exios today. It's Monday, January 9. I'm Nyla Budu. Here's

what we're covering today. Brazil's January 6th moment, plus major incentives for schools

to make their bus fleets electric. But first, why public school enrollment is way down in

America. That's today's one big thing.

During the pandemic, enrollment in public schools went down by more than a million students

that's according to the National Center for Education Statistics. And as we approach

three years since the start of the pandemic, public schools across the country are still

struggling to keep students. And fewer students means less funding, which is forcing some schools

to shut down. Exios is Erica Pandy has been covering the story. Hey, Erica. Hi, Nyla.

So I think the obvious first question is if students are leaving public schools, where are

they going? So they're going to private schools. They're going to charter schools. And the

homeschooling population of students in the US has actually doubled during the pandemic from around

two and a half million to around five million. And why are parents saying that they are taking

their kids out of the public school system and moving them to private charter in homeschooling?

So a lot of the parents that are doing this are kind of frustrated by how schools, which are

subject to the guidelines in their cities and their states, have been flip-flopping. It's not

so much anymore, but kind of the damage is dull, right? They've been flip-flopping on in-person

and virtual learning. And that means that you know, you've got a lot of kids who didn't have great

years, didn't have a great couple of years. You've got kids at home, parents want them to be in

schools. And a lot of them just got frustrated and pulled their kids out. And then if you look at

private schools, their rates of virtual learning were a lot lower throughout the pandemic than

public schools. And of course, homeschooling is its own issue. And you know, it all comes down to

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