Like most government school districts in California, San Diego is losing a large number. Still, the money spent on 12,000 FEWER students is higher than before., The District continues to beg for more more from taxpayers, the State and the Feds, while enrolling 12,000 fewer students. This is about unions and radical ideology, not the students. Maybe Musk could find some time to audit the San Diego schools?
“For over two decades, California’s public school enrollment has been on a decline. After peaking at 6.4 million in 2004, enrollment tumbled all the way down to 5.8 million in 2023, fueled in part by a significant pandemic-era uptick in the rate of enrollment decline. Between 2015 and 2023 alone, the state lost nearly 390,000 students, or about 6 percent of enrollment.
San Diego Unified, the second-largest district in California, has fared even worse. Over the same period, the district lost more than 11,300 students, or about 10.5 percent of its total enrollment.
As KPBS recently reported, at a recent budget workshop, district leaders announced they’re projecting to lose even more students in the coming year. According to figures included in a budget presentation, the district projects it will lose 741 students between the current school year and the next. If those numbers prove true it will mean the district has lost 12,500 students, or about 11.6 percent of its total enrollment, over the past decade.”
San Diego Unified Has Lost Nearly 12,000 Students in Past Decade
by Jakob McWhinney, Voice of San Diego, 2/12/25 https://voiceofsandiego.org/2025/02/12/san-diego-unified-has-lost-nearly-12000-students-in-past-decade/?goal=0_c2357fd0a3-6ddf95371d-81866633
For over two decades, California’s public school enrollment has been on a decline. After peaking at 6.4 million in 2004, enrollment tumbled all the way down to 5.8 million in 2023, fueled in part by a significant pandemic-era uptick in the rate of enrollment decline. Between 2015 and 2023 alone, the state lost nearly 390,000 students, or about 6 percent of enrollment.
San Diego Unified, the second-largest district in California, has fared even worse. Over the same period, the district lost more than 11,300 students, or about 10.5 percent of its total enrollment.
As KPBS recently reported, at a recent budget workshop, district leaders announced they’re projecting to lose even more students in the coming year. According to figures included in a budget presentation, the district projects it will lose 741 students between the current school year and the next. If those numbers prove true it will mean the district has lost 12,500 students, or about 11.6 percent of its total enrollment, over the past decade.
Luckily for district leaders, the declines have slowed in recent years from a high of 3,165 between the 2019 to 2020 school years. But unluckily it doesn’t seem there are a whole lot of reasons to be optimistic that the trend will reverse course.
For one, the district was already reaping the benefits of the launch of universal transitional kindergarten, a new grade for 4-year-olds that injected an entirely new group of students into the district. That new group of students blunted the larger trend of enrollment decline, but the declines still kept coming, and there are no longer any new groups of students waiting in the wings.
Secondly, the larger demographic trends are still moving the wrong way. Birth rates continue to decline, and when people have fewer kids there are simply fewer kids to fill schools.
Lastly, places like San Diego, where the cost of living is prohibitively high, have been particularly hard hit by enrollment declines and population dips. Between 2022 and 2023, for example, nearly 31,000 people moved out of San Diego County. That was the county’s largest outflow in three decades, save for the first year of the pandemic.
During a recent interview on the VOSD Podcast, Board President Cody Petterson, who represents sub-district C, said similar cost of living patterns are playing out within the district.
“You can see it in my sub-district, which is the coast. It’s fairly affluent – Point Loma, Mission Bay, La Jolla and University City. I have 13,000 resident students,” Petterson said.
Trustee Richard Barrera, who represents central-southern San Diego neighborhoods like North Park, Barrio Logan and parts of City Heights, has 31,00 resident students. Those disparities in the number of school-aged kids living in each sub-district exist despite the fact that both sub-districts have similar total populations.
“There’s just no kids. It’s very difficult … young families can’t afford to live there,” Petterson said.
San Diego Unified’s elevated rate of enrollment decline in comparison with the state level also stands in stark contrast to what the county as a whole has seen. From 2015 to 2023, the county saw a 5.2 percent decline in enrollment. That’s not only less than the state’s rate of enrollment decline over that same period, it’s less than the rate San Diego Unified saw.
That’s a big problem because the more students San Diego Unified loses, the less funding it gets – and the district is already strapped with a $112 million deficit. It’s also perplexing because despite the well-publicized scandals the district has weathered, its students have performed fairly well over the years, at least compared to state and national averages.
Ultimately, San Diego Unified’s enrollment dilemma may be partly because, compared to other areas in the county and state, the entire city of San Diego is like Petterson’s sub-district C – unaffordable to young families.
