San Francisco’s downtown may be turning into a ghost town as businesses flee the crime and homelessness the "City by the Bay" has become synonymous with, but business is booming at the city’s private schools as no fewer than nine schools are undergoing expansions.

La Scuola International School (tuition $43,675) is adding nine classrooms, offices, and dining and kitchen space that will boost enrollment from 191 to 475 while increasing staff from 54 to 96.

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University High School (tuition $59,680) is demolishing a two-story commercial building in Presidio Heights and replacing it with a three-story building with academic, athletic, and administrative facilities. The project will allow the enrollment to expand from 410 students to 550.

Not all of the schools are planning to add enrollment, though. St. Ignatius College Preparatory (tuition $31,225) is demolishing five buildings to build larger new editions that will include classrooms, a chapel, a dining area, and a kitchen. The school had to obtain a special permit from the San Francisco Planning Commission, as the new taller buildings would cast a shadow on a plot of land where neighbors are growing some crops.

The San Francisco Chronicle notes that the overall number of private school students in San Francisco is not expected to rise too much past the existing 24,000 students, but considering that public school enrollment in the city has fallen from almost 75,000 in 2018 to just 50,000 today, the fact that private school enrollment is holding steady is impressive.

The precipitous drop in public school enrollment long preceded the city’s prolonged COVID-19 closures and is instead largely driven by the fact that San Franciscans simply aren’t reproducing like they used to. As recently as 1990, more than 10,000 babies were born in San Francisco every year. Now, that number has fallen below 7,500.

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San Franciscans simply are not getting married as often as they used to, and even when they do, they are getting married much later in life, meaning each mother’s window for having children is far smaller.

Of course, the fact that a decent education runs $31,225 on top of some of the nation’s highest state income taxes makes San Francisco a prohibitively expensive place to raise a family. No wonder so many people are fleeing the city.