District’s consultant expects decline to persist for four years
SMMUSD HDQTRS Enrollment in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District is expected to rapidly decline over the next four years, according to a consultant’s report presented to the Board of Education on Thursday.
The findings were not a surprise to school officials since enrollment has been going south since a policy was instituted a few years ago to restrict the amount of non-district resident students attending SMMUSD. The permit was put into place in order to alleviate overcrowding in the schools, but has resulted not only in loss of students, but revenue.
While the results didn’t catch anyone off guard, they are expected to better allow school officials to plan for upcoming budgets and planning for school construction under the Facilities Master Plan.
“Enrollment has been declining and we anticipate that it will continue to decline,” Board Vice President Jose Escarce said on Friday.
The consultant, DecisionInsite, provided the board with two sets of projections — a conservative one that could be used for budgetary planning purposes; and a moderate version that could be applicable for construction planning. One of the differences between the two sets of projections is that the conservative study looks at a three year history of kindergarten enrollment change while the moderate study looks at a four year history.
Regardless of whether it’s a moderate or a conservative five-year outlook, both projections show a decline in enrollment in nearly all grade levels from the current school year to 2012.
The district loses several hundred students a year, a considerable proportion of which is a direct result of the permit policy. Last February, school officials estimated that the moratorium had translated into a loss of $5.1 million in the 2006-07 budget.
The figures provided by the consultant did not include figures from anticipated enrollment as a result of a housing project being constructed near McKinley Elementary School, according to Tim Walker, the deputy superintendent.
The board could take another look at the permit policy at an upcoming meeting.
“As we do our final budget we want to take into consideration a clear picture of enrollment,” Walker said on Friday. “We want to make a decision related to the permit policy with a clear understanding of decline and we want to have the budget in alignment with addressing any potential reduction of the school system going into next year.”
If the enrollment continues to decline in the district, officials will have to look at increasing its permit allotment or look to other funding sources, Walker said.
Board President Oscar de la Torre suggested on Friday that the permit policy be tinkered with so that allotment will align with the enrollment needs on a school by school basis, adding that while enrollment decline has hurt the budget, the district would not want to return to the days of overcrowded classrooms.
“The direction is to start looking at various scenarios,” de la Torre said. “After we look at cost cutting measures, we need to look at what is the optimal carrying capacity for various schools in our district.”
Escarce said he would be interested in knowing whether the projections would have an impact on the Measure BB construction programs since the Facilities Master Plan was built when another consultant, School Works, came up with a different set of projections, which the school board member called “bizarre.”
“School Works never really explained how they had come up with those projections,” Escarce said. “When you looked at the result, they seemed implausible … that’s why we asked for a new set of projections.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 11, 2008. Read the original PDF.