Rocket Science or Common Sense?
The number of students enrolled in California’s K-12 public schools has dropped by 461,000 students — or 7% — over the past two decades. Lower birth rates, rise in homeschooling, and an outflow of families from California have all contributed. The pandemic didn’t help the situation either and students on the fringe academically struggled even more as traditional schools didn’t serve them well and many dropped out and were lost in the chaos.
California student enrollment is expected to?drop even further over the next decade, according to the state Department of Finance, to just over 5 million students — a decline of nearly 20% since the peak in the early 2000s.
San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) decided they wanted to confront their enrollment loss by consolidating some of their schools so that they could close others.? This would allow SFUSD to save millions of dollars by cutting costs, improve services at fewer campuses, and allow the district to redirect some of those savings into teacher and school employee salaries and expanded student services. As expected, parents, school employees, and the mayor pressured the school Board to change course, and the superintendent resigned.?
Guess what, the problem remains. Fewer students, less state funding, raising employee and facility maintenance costs, and no real plan to fix the problem.
As I have laid out in the past, this process is not rocket science and the school board needs the tenacity and bravery to make key decisions that their elected position demands.? The data doesn’t lie, the trends indicate that enrollment is what it is, and those trends tell us that fewer students will be entering the public school system over the next decade.? Should the entire system stay unchanged or press forward with changes to meet the challenges at hand?? Here is what the districts need to do and soon.? ?
Now that the school board has that information, organize a 5-point rating system for the data by school.??
Excellent (A) - Great (B) - Good (C) - Struggling (D) - Failing (F)
Based on this objective data driven rating, you can see which schools are failing, what the parents and students are saying, and a decision can be made on facts and not feelings.? Add to that, make sure that all the data is published and shared with the community.? They have a right to know the details and their children are the reason that public schools exist.? Need some help, call me.? I’ve been looking for a interesting project or two and this entire process could be finished in the spring of 2025.? ?
The big take away from me is that the public school system has waited too long to embrace needed changes and now if they do not, it will all collapse upon itself from the weight of failure. In that we are all to blame as bystanders knowing what could have been done yet avoided it at the cost and comfort of too many.