After Almost 30 Years of Steady Enrollment Growth, PUSD Sees Drop in Enrollment

Dear Parents and Community Members,

If you visit or live in the west or northwest portion of our district, including 4S Ranch, Torrey Highlands, and Santaluz, you can see firsthand the rapid pace of new home construction within the PUSD boundaries. These are the last major areas in our district with open land to be developed. While we also anticipate many smaller housing projects in the foreseeable future, we expect that within the next seven to ten years, all major new home projects will be completed.

When I arrived as superintendent in our district just over four years ago, the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) had estimated that Poway Unified would exceed 40,000 students. However, last year our enrollment was down over the prior year first month enrollment by 131 students, and this year we are down by 286 students at the end of the first month (from 32,908 to 32,622). Prior to last year, we were relatively flat in our enrollment for the past four years. Although a decline of 286 students might not seem like much, with per-student funding levels of approximately $6,000, this could equate to just under $1.8 million in lost revenue for next year. While it is true that the overall fiscal impact would be less than this because staff and material costs would decrease, districts with declining enrollment invariably find it difficult to cut costs by amounts commensurate to lost revenue.

How could we be growing so rapidly in the northwest and western portions of the district and experience a decline in overall enrollment?

A large part of the answer rests with the fact that our community is maturing. Many families with children move into a new community together; as children grow up, parents often decide to stay in their homes. Therefore, while once a neighborhood street might have been filled with children, now the numbers are much reduced. This is precisely what has happened in the Poway portion of our district and is starting to occur in the Rancho Bernardo and Los Peñasquitos communities. In the Poway region of our school district alone, we have seen a steady decline of approximately 1,600 students since 1999. The fact that we have not seen an overall districtwide enrollment decline sooner has been due to the growth in the western portion of our district.

Declining K-12 enrollment has been taking place for some time in many districts across the state. In fact, we are one of the last districts in San Diego County not to be in decline, due in large part to the desirability of our schools and the overall quality of life in our many wonderful neighborhoods. Decreasing enrollment is part of the life cycle of any community. At some point the decline stops and enrollment stabilizes and even goes back up, but never to the initial enrollment levels.

We are in the early phases of reviewing enrollment patterns and looking at projections for both existing and new communities coming on line to better understand our long-term enrollment patterns and the implications for our operating budget and facility needs.

Questions to Explore:

• What can we anticipate from the experience of other districts that have gone through decline, especially regarding how much of an enrollment decline we will ultimately experience?
• If revenues decline, how do we anticipate minimizing the impact on services and programs?
• How many new schools should we build in areas where the student population is growing rapidly, or when should we consider moving boundaries to fill existing schools?
• Given decline, what are the implications for the district modernization project under Proposition U and new construction in our Communities Facilities District areas in the western region of the District?
• How small should enrollment become in a region before we consolidate schools in a region through a school closure?

STUDENT RECOGNITION

These are examples of the fine accomplishments occurring at our schools every day.

• The College Board Committee has announced the 2005-2006 National Merit Scholarship semifinalists. These academically talented seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for 8,200 merit scholarship awards, worth $33 million dollars, that will be offered next spring. More than 1.3 million students from nearly 21,000 high schools in the United States entered the 2005-2006 National Merit Program by taking the 2004 PSAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test in their junior year, which served as an initial screening of program entrants. The students designated as semifinalists are the highest scorers in each of the 50 states. The following nineteen students were selected from the Poway Unified School District:

• Heather Hernandez, Poway High School junior, was selected to serve as vice chair of the National Students Against Violence Everywhere (SAVE) Youth Advisory Board. Heather will join a six-member team to discuss school violence issues and develop action plans for SAVE chapters across the nation. One of her major responsibilities will be to help plan and organize the 10th Annual SAVE Youth Summit and National SAVE Day, October 19.