The Abridged version:
- The student population at Davis Joint Unified has been steadily shrinking for more than a decade and the problem is expected to worsen in coming years.
- Davis school officials reviewed the dropping numbers Thursday and discussed difficult options for how to handle the decline, including potential staff cuts.
- Enrollment numbers in Davis were temporarily buoyed by the addition of transitional kindergarten and transfers from neighboring areas.
The student population in Davis is shrinking, and leaders are bracing themselves and their communities for a tough path forward.
“As we decline, those tradeoffs are really going to be hard,” Superintendent Matt Best said.
Almost a year ago, officials said they were preparing for the “worst-case scenario” that included the potential shuttering of two of the district’s 10 elementary schools. Best said for now, talks of closures are on pause but not fully off the table.
Other mitigation strategies, as Davis Joint Unified eyes losing as many as 1,600 students in the next decade, include staff reductions and combined classes.
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Enrollment drops plague districts across the region and state. In Davis, numbers have been slipping for more than 15 years, according to Laura Juanitas, associate superintendent of student support services. She presented the latest data to school board members at their meeting Thursday evening.
Best said the district will have more updates and community forums later this fall.
Numbers keep dropping
Enrollment across Davis schools in 2019-20 sat around 8,548 students, according to Juanitas.
As of Sept. 10, that figure was 8,092.
New projections from the California Department of Finance show the student population in Davis reducing even more dramatically to 6,556 in 2035-36.
The recent addition of transitional kindergarten classes helped temporarily buoy enrollment. So did a marginal uptick in students transferring to Davis Joint Unified from other districts.
Neither fixed the underlying issue, which is the declining number of kids residing in Davis, Juanitas said.
“Unless we have some significant … population increase in Davis, we don’t expect these numbers to increase that much,” she said. “Because declining birth rates is a phenomenon across the state and across the country.”
‘Fewer students to go around’
School officials in Woodland are watching a similar trend in their district, said Becca Bernard, president of the Woodland Education Association.
“It’s something that worries all of us,” she said.
Bernard said some of the loss from Woodland schools comes from students transferring to their southern neighboring district. Of the roughly 1,000 transfer students at Davis Joint Unified, Juanitas said she would estimate between a third to half come from Woodland.
But recruiting more non-Davis residents to enroll won’t fix the district’s situation, Juanitas said.
“The idea of a quality Davis education will not go away,” she said. “But there are fewer students to go around.”
Housing tension effects
School leaders pointed to rising costs of living, along with a general lack of housing as contributing to fewer families.
“Young people can’t afford to settle in Davis,” school board President Hiram Jackson said.
In a city where wariness of new development runs deep, housing projects often garner steep skepticism and public opposition campaigns. Voters in June narrowly rejected a proposal for 1,800 new housing units.
“In conversations around housing in Davis, there’s, ‘We don’t want to be like Elk Grove. There’s sprawl there,'” Jackson said. “‘We don’t want sprawl’ means, ‘I don’t want to accommodate younger adults. And I think this is the consequence of that.”
A different development measure is on the ballot in November and so far, faces less formal resistance.
Best, the superintendent, said the district expects the addition of more than 1,200 new homes, as outlined in Measure W, would help but not totally fix their declining problem.
Cuts ahead, as bargaining stalls
When enrollment drops, so does funding from the state — tied to how many students attend class.
Best said officials anticipate needing to make about $4 million in cuts this school year, which would predominantly come from cutting staff.
Employees, though, are already calling on leaders not to make them feel the brunt of financial uncertainty.
“Declining enrollment may change the number of students we serve,” said Beau Runyan, president of the California School Employees Association Davis chapter. “But it should not change how much we value the people who serve them.”
Leading up to Thursday’s meeting, more than 100 educators from the Davis Teachers Association gathered in front of the chamber entrance. Decked in navy “DTA” T-shirts, and many holding large cardboard signs, the union members marked a notable update in their bargaining process.
The union last week declared impasse. Negotiations will now require a mediator, one of the last steps before a potential strike. The top sticking point is teachers’ demand for 100% district covered healthcare, a debate that has jammed negotiations in school districts across the state.
