The Progress Report: How Some Schools Are Trying to Counter Enrollment Decline

Schools have been hit hard by enrollment decline in recent years. There are tens of thousands of fewer students in local public schools than there were just a decade ago.

Many school leaders have struggled to figure out how to approach that challenge and new numbers released last week by the CDC confirm what we already knew: the decline will only get worse. That’s because the U.S. birth rate has fallen to a record low.

Simply put, there will be fewer people in America in years to come. 

State officials predicted areas like San Diego will be hit especially hard by population decline. That’s because not only will the region be buffeted by the lower birth rates, but also its high cost of living is chasing away young, working families. 

That’s why California’s Department of Finance projects that between 2014 and 2044, the number of students in San Diego County public schools will have declined by about 28 percent. That would mean local public schools would have 139,545 fewer students than they did just three decades earlier. 

139,545.  

That’s a huge number. So huge, that it’s hard to understand exactly how big a change it would be, but I’ll take a stab. If that prediction comes true, it would be the equivalent of the cities of Del Mar, Solana Beach, Coronado, Imperial Beach, Lemon Grove and Poway just disappearing. And that decline is just accounting for the decrease in school-aged children. 

A decline of that magnitude, and the funding cuts that would accompany it, would inevitably lead to the closure of schools across the county. 

What’s especially tough is the decline is largely out of the hands of educators. They can’t kick off a baby boom. They also can’t reverse generations of rising costs for working families.  

But school districts are not entirely powerless. There are plenty of families who’ve chosen to homeschool or opted to send their kids to non-public schools or public charters. That’s bad news for district run schools, as funding follows the child. 

So, some districts are working to lure kids back into their classroom. From flashy facilities overhauls to programmatic upgrades, here are a couple of ways educators are trying to make it happen. The strategies ultimately won’t reverse the structural trends washing over schools, but they may help on the margin. 

‘New Pair of Shoes’ 

One tool San Diego Unified officials have turned to has been a wholesale reinvention of some campuses, Trustee Richard Barrera said.  

Look no further than Logan Memorial Educational Campus. Families long avoided the school’s predecessors, but half a decade ago, the old, worn-down campuses were torn down brick by brick and completely rebuilt.  

What the district created was a gleaming new campus that not only provided new facilities for the K-8 schools that sat there previously, but also Logan Heights’ first high school and an early childcare center for infants and toddlers. All told, it was the most expensive construction project in the district’s history.  

Those kinds of investments make an impact, Barrera said. 

“They say we care about your kids, and we believe that your kids should have a really high-quality state of the art environment to go to school in,” Barrera said. 

The shiny new facilities themselves are a selling point – and one that will last for years to come, said Juan Flores, the head counselor at Logan Memorial. But they also signal an investment in the communities those schools serve that goes deeper than a new foundation. 

“Anybody would love a new pair of shoes, right?” Flores said. “But if families know that the district was willing to invest so much, they should understand that they’re willing to invest in other areas as well, like, teachers and administrators that are going to relate to the community and understand the community and be willing to work with the community.” 

None of that really matters if good things aren’t happening inside of a school’s classrooms though, which brings us to our next selling point: programs. 

‘Have It Be Relevant, Have It Be Quality’ 

Barrera said that Logan Memorial represents the district trying to do two things at once – reinvent a school’s facilities and revamp programming, with community support.  

“If we have schools that families are choosing not to be at, we have to then go in and say, ‘What can we do?’ Both from instructional programs to physical modernization,” Barrera said. “We’re going to basically rebuild the school, and in the process we’re going to engage the community and ask ‘What kind of programming do you want to see at these schools?’” 

The community wanted an early childcare center operating on Montessori principles and project-based learning elements into the classroom. So, that’s what the district delivered. Whether those programs pan all the way out is still to be seen. 

San Diego Unified isn’t the only district parlaying new facilities into new programming. 

The Lemon Grove School District last year opened its first new school in decades, the Early Childhood Education Center. The new, sleekly designed and beautifully manicured school serves 3- and 4-year-old children. Like other districts, part of the hope is that if they can get kids into their schools early, they may stay with Lemon Grove long-term. 

Other districts around the county are also taking the community’s lead on new or expanded programming.  

Jose Espinoza is the superintendent of South Bay Union, which has the unfortunate distinction of having lost more students over the past decade than nearly any other district in the county.  

For some community members, the traditional approach to education isn’t attractive, Espinoza said. So, he said the district has been trying to tailor its offerings to fit the needs of the community.  

One plan is working to more closely align its curriculum to standards to improve test performance. Another is leaning into dual-immersion programs, which are particularly popular among the community, many of whom already speak multiple languages. The changes aren’t reserved for the classroom either. The district recently started an elementary soccer league. 

“We’ve never had sports before, but we started a soccer league with the idea of making sure that we’re engaging our community and providing the things that they’re that they’re asking for,” Espinoza said. 

Moises Aguirre, superintendent of Sweetwater Union High School district, said his district is also leaning into already popular programs. One of them is the is the International Baccalaureate program already in use at two high schools. The program is a rigorous, internationally recognized curriculum framework.  Recently, Sweetwater expanded the program into one of its middle schools, so it can act as a feeder school. 

While many of the root causes of enrollment decline are out of the control of school officials, programming is not, he said. That’s where their efforts can make the most impact. 

“Can we make it easier to build affordable housing? That’s outside of the school’s realm, for the most part,” Aguirre said. “What I try to focus on is our programming. Have it be relevant, have it be quality and have it be programs that our communities are interested in.” 

‘Change the Image of the District’ 

Flores, the head counselor at Logan Memorial, has lived in Logan Heights since the 1970s. He said many families have harbored a degree of skepticism about their local schools. Oftentimes, the assumption has been that they would send their kids to schools outside the neighborhood.  

“I’ve always received that same question from parents, like ‘Would it be better if I send my kids out up north or to a charter so they could get a better education?’” Flores said. 

Since Logan Memorial’s reinvention, a lot has changed. The high school now offers a whole slew of career technical education programs that can kickstart students’ careers beyond school. Thanks to a partnership with the San Diego Community College District, students can even graduate from high school as certified nursing assistants. 

But creating those programs is just one piece of the puzzle. Educators then need to make sure community members actually know they exist. Flores said the district’s made some big steps on that front. School staff now show up at neighborhood fairs and festivals to pitch their offerings and hold school events for community members.  

“We have this amazing setup that I feel we need to really keep putting out there, so we can let the community know what we have to offer,” Flores said. “I’m just talking about us, but in reality, it’s the same thing in all the communities.” 

Marianna Vinson, the superintendent of the Lemon Grove School District, has taken that community work even further. When she came on as superintendent, her board gave her a clear priority: do what you can to stabilize enrollment.  

Over the past decade, enrollment at the district had declined by about 22 percent. District leaders projected Lemon Grove would continue to lose about two percent of its students per year. 

“We needed to stop the bleeding,” Vinson said. 

But part of the stabilization work was, as Vinson put it, was to “change the image of the district.”  

The district has long been lower performing. But given income levels closely correlate with test performance, and Lemon Grove schools have a high percentage of low-income students, that’s not surprising.  

So, Vinson set off to preach the gospel of Lemon Grove. And there’s a lot to preach about, she said, like the district having made progress on reading and math performance every year for the past three years. 

“There’s very few districts that can say that. I know the state of California can’t say that,” Vinson said. 

She set up meetings with community groups, did targeted social media campaigns, specifically geared toward the new early-childhood school, and worked to cut down the number of families who were leaving their schools going into middle school. 

As part of that press tour, Vinson meet with a group of people that, at first blush, is rather unexpected: realtors selling homes in the area.  

In many ways, their goals dovetail nicely. Schools want families in the neighborhood to enroll in them, and realtors are looking for ways to draw people into the homes they have to sell. If Vinson can sell realtors on what her schools have to offer, the realtors may be able to sell families on them too. 

Recently, she met with a team building a 19-unit community near San Miguel Elementary. 

“I wanted to let them know there’s a nationally recognized ‘Leader in Me,’ school just over there. So, when they open up for sale, we want to be there asking the family to consider sending their child up the road.” 

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