In the News: San Mateo County Enrollment Stable for Now

Original article courtesy San Mateo Daily Journal

By Sierra Lopez
Daily Journal staff  
Apr 25, 2022

Like school districts across the state, San Mateo County education leaders are continuing to adapt to a dip in California’s student-age population which has prompted state leaders to better research the causes of the exodus to develop potential solutions.

 

“People are moving and they do what they need to to have a better lifestyle but we’re still here to educate the students we have,” Chris Mount-Benites, superintendent of the Burlingame School District. “It’s a tough puzzle but it’s not going to change overnight.”

 

Though the pandemic has taken the blame for exacerbating the county’s loss of students, many public school administrators agree the issue has been one plaguing the area for years caused in large part by a steadily increasing cost of living that’s pushed families out of the area and a statewide decline in births.

 

Mount-Benites said enrollment in his district has been stabilized partly by the state’s expansion of universal transitional kindergarten which funnels funding into school districts that offer classes to students starting at 4 years old.

 

But those dollars are not new funds coming into local districts, he said. Instead they’re repurposed funds the state is reinvesting into education as families flee to neighboring states. Fluctuating state population is not new though, Mount-Benites said, noting California is just now experiencing a decline after a long history of growth.

 

“California is an expensive state to live in and an expensive place to raise kids in. We’ve been seeing that for years,” said Mount-Benites.

 

California’s public school system is funded in two ways. Districts can either be under the community-funded model, meaning their budgets are largely supported by property taxes, or they can be state funded through the Local Control Funding Formula to cover the total cost for educating a student, about $14,000 a year. Additional dollars are distributed to districts under that model depending on the number of underserved students on their rolls.

 

And instead of basing funding on the number of students enrolled, the state uses a distinct average daily attendance to determine how much they will receive, despite expenditures like staff salaries or infrastructure costs remaining stagnant when a student is absent.

 

Without a reliable and adequate funding system, Mount-Benites said state-funded districts are put in the difficult position of right-sizing staffing for future years while ensuring it has enough funding to compete with neighboring locally funded districts when hiring or maintaining valued programming.

 

“It creates a real struggle for Bay Area schools that are not basic aid to try to keep up and when we’re only getting state funding,” Mount-Benites said.

 

When thinking of solutions, Mount-Benites said the state should be funding schools based on the cost of living in the areas where they exist rather than the current model that pays a district the same amount regardless of whether its in an expensive metropolitan area like San Francisco and its neighboring suburbs or in rural towns in the Central Valley.

 

Ultimately, though, he said the responsibility for fixing the state’s education funding model does not lie with local school districts that are required to figure out how to effectively educate students regardless of external factors.

 

Recognizing growing concerns for the state’s education system, state Superintendent Tony Thurmond announced the creation of a task force that will use data analysis to study which students are leaving and where they are going. Key data points will include birth rates, immigration status and cost of living, according to a press release.

 

“I am committed to supporting the needs of all our schools and school districts and while each school and community has its own unique history and conditions, declining enrollment is something that we are facing together,” Thurmond said in the press release. “For many communities, this is not a new challenge, but after two years of a pandemic, the impacts feel amplified and the future seems daunting. I want this task force to be intentional about understanding the why behind the drops and the sharing of ideas and local efforts that we may contemplate scaling to make a real difference.”

 

Kevin Skelly, superintendent of San Mateo Union High School District, said dropping enrollment can cause funding issues for various programs but ultimately, the district and many others in the county funded through property tax have seen less of an impact than the handful of LCFF districts predominantly funded by the state.

 

Dan Deguara, superintendent of Belmont-Redwood Shores School District, said their figures show a small decline with kindergarten classes being smaller than graduating eighth-grade classes but overall enrollment has remained consistent grade over grade.

 

“Because we have been responsive to enrollment changes, we’ve been able to make yearly staffing adjustments without adverse impacts to our employees. District staff continue to monitor enrollment and will be completing a demographic study to inform long-range planning,” Deguara said in an email.

 

Similarly, Superintendent Darnise Williams with the Sequoia Union High School District said the district’s enrollment numbers have remained stable despite the state’s declining student population.

 

“Although we are seeing this pattern throughout California school districts, the Sequoia Union High School District is projecting stable student enrollment trends into the near future. Despite this fact, the district continues to closely monitor the data, and work closely with our feeder districts to ensure that we continue having a strong student pipeline into our district,” Williams said.

 

At the South San Francisco Unified School District, enrollment has steadily declined over decades. John Baker, president of the Board of Trustees, said the district had about 12,300 students in 1976 and that number fell to about 7,800 students at the start of this school year.

 

Though the trend hasn’t spelled trouble for the district yet, Baker said he worries the district in the near future could face a dilemma similar to San Bruno Park School District which had to consolidate school campuses due to financial constraints.

 

“On one hand, it’s disappointing because we have to make decisions,” Baker said. “But we haven’t yet had to go the way of our neighbors in San Bruno who had to close campuses, but in [coming] years, if these trends continue we might have to.”

 

Like Mount-Benites’ Burlingame School District, Baker said SSFUSD’s enrollment could be buoyed by an expansion of universal TK but a lack of new family-affordable housing development has left the district without a substantial boost of enrollment.

 

Alternatively, Millbrae School District Superintendent Debbie French shared hope for new housing development near her district leading to increased enrollment after a historic declining trend.

 

Having faced enrollment dilemmas for years, French said the district is concerned but prepared for what shifts may come, noting staff is in full planning mode for next year. Some students have left during the pandemic but the district has begun recapturing those it’s lost and has become skilled in right-sizing its budget.

 

“Millbrae has been grappling with declining enrollment for quite some time so this is not a new experience for us,” French said. “While we were very clear that we are in declining enrollment, we are excited about new developments going on around us.”

 

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