“I’ve been talking to the school district about their declining enrollment. We’re at 180 this year, 200 next year, and it’s not looking any better,” Councilmember Swanson said on Tuesday night. “I said, as a Councilperson, what is the one thing that I can do that can help make a difference and it’s resounding. ‘We know you’re not a fan of growth but we’ve got to have some market-rate affordable housing, we have to have something for the families to come here. Otherwise we are going to continue to see declining enrollment.’”
It is a relatively easy fix to talk about the need for more workforce housing. But if declining enrollment truly is going to be a continued problem, then a 600-unit housing development is simply a band-aid applied to temporarily stop the bleeding.
Also, Ms. Swanson’s numbers are a bit inflated. The decline in enrollment was just 86, at 8440 down from 8526. The district had projected a drop of 39 students, so the actual drop was a bit larger than expected. There appears to be no projected loss of 200 students either, so it is unclear where she was getting her information.
The question is really where the projections take us and what the district plans to do about it. Right now the projections are for mostly flat, with a slight decline in enrollment over the next decade.
On Friday, the school board candidates, three of whom will have to grapple with school funding issues, were asked about declining enrollment.
Sheila Allen acknowledged that the land use policies are issues for the other side of the aisle, for her counterparts at the city council, however, she did profess the need for more workforce housing, echoing the sentiment of Rochelle Swanson.
“I imagine it’s because of flat housing growth (few new homes being built) and houses are fairly expensive here. … I’m not sure that’s going to change too much in the near future.”
Tim Taylor noted that West Village could generate some students for the district, and the possibility of new housing at the Cannery Park site could do the same.
“But we live in a time when not a lot of residential expansion is going on,” Taylor said.
Back in 2008, the district appeared to be caught flat-footed by a huge drop in attendance, combined with cuts at the state level that led to actions threatening to close schools, cut back on programs and lay off employees.
However, since then the district has been able to plan much better.
Trustee Gina Daleiden stated on Friday, “I can’t tell you with certainty if enrollment declines are a thing of the past, but I can tell you that a thing of the past is the failure to plan for what will be changes.”
One change that the incumbents made was hiring Davis Demographics to do a modernized and updated assessment of Davis demographics based on ten-year projections. This is done so the board can keep their eyes on a moving target.
The district will have to deal with declining enrollment in two ways. First, they will have to rely more on local funding sources. Right now the state bases their money on Average Daily Attendance, an amount paid per student per year. That amount has been set by the state legislature, however it has declined each year due to the budget crisis in Sacramento.
The amount of money thus declines when the district has fewer students. Fewer students, most of whom are spread throughout the district, means that the set costs, personnel and infrastructure, do not decline but the amount of money the district receives does. This leads to the need to contract, whether it is cutting personnel or closing schools.
Mike Nolan argued on Friday, “It’s easier to deal with a decrease in students than an increase.”
But that is not accurate. Increases in students mean more money for the district. At some point, that means the need to build more schools, but right now the district has a good amount of capacity to accommodate increases and thus it is easier to deal with more money than less.
To supplement the state money, the district has passed a series of parcel taxes in 2007 and 2008, and is now looking at one in May of 2011 that would fund up to $600 per parcel.
The more the district can rely on local funding sources, the less the impact from declining enrollment, but as Tim Taylor put it, “declining enrollment is devastating” any way you cut it.
The other way the district has been able to deal with declining numbers of students in Davis is by taking more interdistrict transfers.
Tim Taylor argued, “If we can bring students into the Davis district, they bring money with them.” He mentioned the district’s Da Vinci Charter Academy as “a magnet that has successfully lured students into the district.”
The bottom line here is that this is a difficult issue. Some of the decline may be stayed temporarily by the development at West Village. The city can attempt to develop some of the infill sites and possibly ConAgra. But that is, at the very most, going to temporarily halt the decline. The city is simply not going to grow a lot in the coming years, and property values will remain high.
That means that the solutions to declining enrollment have to come from school district policies rather than land use decisions. The district must plan well and figure out ways to anticipate the problems.
The district must become more reliant on local sources of revenue.
And the district must stay innovative and continue to produce high quality schools that attract others from outside of the area.
Declining enrollment does not have to be the death knell to land use policies or to high quality schools.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
[quote]The district must become more reliant on local sources of revenue.[/quote]
THe Serrano Decision in 1971 ruled that California’s previous method of funding, which like most traditional school districts relied on local property tax revenues: [quote]”fails to meet the requirements of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and the California Constitution.”[/quote]
If we are to move back to local sources of revenue such as additional parcel taxes wouldn’t this violate Serrano? Or has the mood/courts shifted so much in 40 years that this no longer matters?
dmg: ““I’ve been talking to the school district about their declining enrollment. We’re at 180 this year, 200 next year, and it’s not looking any better,” Councilmember Swanson said on Tuesday night. “I said, as a Councilperson, what is the one thing that I can do that can help make a difference and it’s resounding. ‘We know you’re not a fan of growth but we’ve got to have some market-rate affordable housing, we have to have something for the families to come here. Otherwise we are going to continue to see declining enrollment.’””
Just bc 600 housing units are built, doesn’t necessarily mean they will be purchased. The housing market is not good at the moment, and it does not look as if it will rebound for a while. Secondly, building houses in Davis will not make them affordable to the average worker. In fact, the people that are apt to be able to afford the new housing could be wealthy seniors with no children. Thirdly, what is being said here? That the town of Davis needs to continually grow bigger to accommodate/effectuate increased enrollment every year bc the school district is incapable of managing its own budget? Is the school district going to provide police/fire protection and other city services to this burgeoning town as it continually grows ever larger for the sake of increasing school enrollment? Does this town exist for the sake of our primary and secondary school system, or do the schools exist because of our town?
For purposes of clarity, what you are calling “DMG” is actually Rochelle Swanson’s statement at the council meeting on Tuesday.
I concur with Elaine’s statement, “Just bc 600 housing units are built, doesn’t necessarily mean they will be purchased.” Further, the developer needs to price the houses at an affordable price. As we saw during the WHR debates, what a developer feels is affordable can be quite different from what “the workforce” feels is affordable. Additionally, banks are putting lots of hudles in the path of granting mortgages even in high income situations. How are they going to handle an application from a family with a “workforce” income?
The realistic approach IMHO is to determine a “right size” that fully factors in the current and continuing demographics of the community and then develop a zero-based budget for that “right-sized” district . . . including both revenues and expenses. The result will accept the fact that Davis will continue to age and the average number of residents per household will continue to decline as a result of that aging.
Once that “right size” has been calculated, then the District can consider enrollment increase initiatives that draw tuition-paying students from outside the District who covet the quality of education the Davis schools provide.
People like me, who are well past the point where children will live permanently in my household, will have to accept that high quality schools are part of the definition of the high Quality of Life we enjoy in Davis, and that paying Parcel Taxes is simply the cost we took on when we came to Davis because of its high Quality of Life.
Interesting question, Dr. How much will we be allowed to improve our schools before they’ve again become “too good” to allow on that track? What a Catch-22. And, a model of unintended consequences theory.
Did Serrano foresee the drop in California’s school support rank–from one of the highest in the nation to one of the lowest? Or, the resulting reduced-quality education throughout the state based on the lowest common denominator (rather than a better state-wide system based on improved funding to poor districts)? The decision’s promise was an improvement on California’s already top-notch education quality, not a downward spiral to 48th or 49th.
Did Serrano foresee the subsequent Proposition 13 aimed, in part, at keeping “our district’s” tax money from being shipped from to “their districts.” Or, Proposition 218 requiring votes on all manner of government assessments which further increased competition for available scarce local resources? Or, the Proposition 13 provision requiring two-thirds votes on budgets, which has pretty much has brought the state legislature to its knees, encouraging unhealthy deals to operate.
I guess we can’t be too critical of the Court for not staying true to the framers’ original intent since our now-massive state constitution is so easily changeable and rapidly changing.
Elaine: Does this town exist for the sake of our primary and secondary school system, or do the schools exist because of our town?
Because Davis has good schools, it is a more attractive place to live if you have kids. I know you and I have gone back and forth on whether Davis schools as they are now are good or not based on your personal experience, but if you look at what else is available in the Sacramento area, this is as good as it gets. A kid friendly environment that Davis has (relative to other Sacramento area communities) means that there is less overall youth crime in Davis. Accessible good schools go far to help stabilize a community.
The housing market is not good at the moment, and it does not look as if it will rebound for a while. Secondly, building houses in Davis will not make them affordable to the average worker. In fact, the people that are apt to be able to afford the new housing could be wealthy seniors with no children.
An underlying false assumption that is being made in this discussion is that the population of school kids is constant over time and that it’s only the economic situation that is keeping families from moving to Davis.
Clearly the economic cycle is a factor, but there has also been a natural decline in kids being born in recent years. Davis has avoided as steep a decline in enrollment as other districts. But that decline will continue for several years because the current birthrate continues to decline due to this recession.
Also, families are not only looking at home ownership. There is a rental market in Davis that is often cheaper and probably worth it if you’re shopping around for good schools for your kids. In Davis, I suspect that the rental market is very mobile, because of the university student population.
wdf1: “Because Davis has good schools, it is a more attractive place to live if you have kids.”
I would agree. But I don’t think our land use policies should be driven solely by what is best for our primary and secondary schools. The schools are not going to have to pay for the extra city services/higher taxes that will be the result if new housing is built. The town does not exist for the sake of our schools… It should be the other way around IMHO…
wdf1: “Clearly the economic cycle is a factor, but there has also been a natural decline in kids being born in recent years. Davis has avoided as steep a decline in enrollment as other districts. But that decline will continue for several years because the current birthrate continues to decline due to this recession.”
And more housing is not necessarily going to fix this issue…
dmg: “For purposes of clarity, what you are calling “DMG” is actually Rochelle Swanson’s statement at the council meeting on Tuesday.”
Thanks for the clarification. I’ll try and be more careful w my attibutions in the future…
Elaine, I am a bit more ambivalent about city planning policy than I am about district schools. But I think we agree that building more houses mainly to improve the school situation is an unsustainable strategy.
But there is a role that the city can play in supporting a kid friendly environment — pools, city sports leagues, etc.
Only other thing I would add is reiterate that it isn’t a decline in enrollment that is really hurting the schools right now. It’s the lack of funding for K-12 education in the state budget.
Bottom line, 75% of Davis doesn’t want more housing at this time or anytime in the near future. The city counsel works for us, they need to start complying to the people’s mandates.
[quote]Did Serrano foresee the drop in California’s school support rank–from one of the highest in the nation to one of the lowest? [/quote]
I doubt it.
For the record I was just asking a question. BTW I think there is a connection between Serrano, Prop 13 and the decline in our schools. Like it or not people are more inclined to support local schools than some statewide mandate. Some cities have already reached a tipping point where the middle class have abandoned the public schools; even in affluent San Francisco that vast majority of white kids go to private schools.
WDF: I think you sum up my sentiments in your post. This is one more reason why I think we have to seriously reform our public compensation system. The more we eat up paying for public employees and their retirement, the less resources we have to provide the kinds of city services that we need.
ban sale of condoms in city limits…
don’t laugh, it makes as much sense as a way to make more kids in Davis as building houses in the hopes that fertile people will fill them, and then refill schools to some unnatural state not supported by our actual residents.
Come on folks- quit with the social engineering!
“… I think you sum up my sentiments in your post. This is one more reason why I think we have to seriously reform our public compensation system. The more we eat up paying for public employees and their retirement, the less resources we have to provide the kinds of city services that we need.”
Are robots performing these services? Public employees perform those duties and, as inconvenient as you seem to find it, they must be paid.
biddlin… in all fairness to DMG, he’s not talking about ALL public employees… just City employees, particularly those earning more than 100k per year with retiree medical benefits, and having a 2.5% @ 55 retirement system or better… I suspect he’d support much higher salaries for those in DJUSD, and much better benefits than they currently enjoy… perhaps a 10% cut for higher paid city employees, with the savings passed on to DJUSD would be in order, in DMG’s view…
As I have discussed many times in the past, and also at the last meeting, new subdivision growth leads to fluctuating enrollment and its attendent problems. When a new subdivision is built, it tends to be populated by people of an age cohort. As their children come along, new schools are built to accomodate the high number of children. The children soon grow up and go to college, and enrollment declines.
This is what happened in the 150’s subdivision where I grew up. New schools were built to accomodate us, and then, when we left home, schools had to be closed down.
The problem is not increasing or declining enrollment, because the school district is funded on a per capita basis. The challenge is to have exactly the right number of schools for the students, and this is always difficult in communities that are building new subdivisions.
Sooner or later, all communities are built out, and they developed mature, mixed-aged neighborhoods with a fairly constant number of students. This has happened in the neighborhood where I grew up. Many empty nesters moved to condos towntown to be closer to ammenities, many retired and moved elsewhere, and many passed on over the years, families with young children moved in, and the neighborhood now has people of all ages. The number of school children is fairly constant.
The school districts in the build-out communities where I have lived have been among the best in the nation, even though they do not build new subdivisions.
Building new subdivisions leads to more, not less, instability in enrollment with alternating overenrollment and underenrollment. If we try to match the number of children with the number of schools via new subdivision growth, any solution will be temporary and will just kick the can down the road.
One little point that no one brings up: I was just talking with a friend who works in Davis but can’t afford to live here. Because of the space in our schools, he can now enroll his children in Davis schools. It is his belief and mine that building a new subdivision would not bring prices down to a level that would allow him to live here, but might mean that people like himself who work in Davis would not be allowed to enroll their children here.
What you are saying might be true in a situation where supply is not being artificially constrained but isn’t true for Davis. You build enough housing and prices come down and people with kids will be able to afford to live here. Restricting supply causes a hollowing out and a move towards student rentals not an even age demography.
If you can’t afford to live here but work here and put your kids in Davis schools you are a victim of Davis housing policy not a beneficiary. More than anything you are an example of the unintended consequence of restrictive housing policy, de-facto leapfrog development ala Spring Lake.
I agree with Sue and Gunrock’s tongue-in-cheek statement. I don’t know the history of Davis school enrollment, but I am sure that sometime in the last 20 years or so there were fewer students in the system than there is today, and the schools were still excellent. The myth of endless growth being essential to maintain good schools is just that. Davis will mature, the overall population will stabilize, as will the student population, and everything will be just fine.
[quote]I am sure that sometime in the last 20 years or so there were fewer students in the system than there is today, and the schools were still excellent. [/quote]
While this is a true statement, at the same time it misunderstands the dynamics of what a shrinking enrollment does in terms of putting stress on the system to contract in uneven increments – which means less money overall and difficulties in cutting personnel and possibly closing schools.
Mr.Toad said . . . “What you are saying might be true in a situation where supply is not being artificially constrained but isn’t true for Davis. You build enough housing and prices come down and people with kids will be able to afford to live here. Restricting supply causes a hollowing out and a move towards student rentals not an even age demography.”
I’m not sure I understand your last sentence, so I’ll simply respond to your first two sentences. How is supply being artificially constrained? There is no evidence that prices will come down in Davis. The high prices are a result of the very high Quality of Life that Davis delivers to its residents and its workforce. Each year UCD graduates approximately 7,000 – 8,000 students. Well over 50% of those students would like to come back to Davis to live. So in order to create a supply of houses that could keep up with the demand, Davis would have to add 5,000 new houses each year just to keep up with the demand from a single class of graduates. Prices would not come down until the supply exceeded the demand, and given the existing inventory of alumni and alumnae from prior graduated classes, that won’t happen unless Davis’ population reaches 250,000.
Of course with a population of 250,000 Davis wouldn’t be Davis anymore. It would be Tucson.
I do know the history of Davis school enrollment. My kids were in the schools here in the last 20 years.
The district’s ability to project accurately has never been good, to put it mildly. Mace Ranch and Wild Horse came were built in the 1980’s and 90’s. Over-enrollment then caused major dislocations. The junior high schools were bursting at the seams: when my daughter attended Holmes, there were 1100 students there. Using faulty assumptions, two new elementary schools and a new junior high were built. Re-drawing the attendance boundaries caused passionate outcry. When enrollment was steady — instead of growing, as had been projected — the oversupply of facilities led to the closure of Valley Oak.
I agree that declining enrollment is easier to manage than increasing enrollment.
Further, Mr. Toad, unless the developers of new housing price their new houses differently than they have been doing over the past 10-20 years, there will be no decline in housing prices. There is nothing artificial about a developer wanting to extract the highest possible price for the houses he/she builds. Its capitalism pure and simple.
David M. Greenwald said . . . “While this is a true statement, at the same time it misunderstands the dynamics of what a shrinking enrollment does in terms of putting stress on the system to contract in uneven increments – which means less money overall and difficulties in cutting personnel and possibly closing schools.”
David, all businesses deal with stresses. All businesses find cutting personnel challenging. All businesses face challenges that can cause them to close plants, or offices, or storefronts, or restaurants. Why do you think that schools are (should be) immune to that reality?
Some Sacramento-area stats:
Davis/El Macero
On the market: 328
Sold in September: 25
(12 Davis, 13 El Macero)
median price drop in last year, Davis: 6%
El Macero: 20%
Median price Davis: $406,000
Dixon: 270
Sold in September: 21
median price drop: 17%
Median price: $330,000
West Sacramento: 755
Sold in September: 23
median price drop: 5%
Median price: $237,000
Woodland: 582
Sold in September: 57
median price drop: 4%
Median price: $200,500
Total on the market: 1945
Total sold: 126
So how many homes would have to be built in Davis to cause the home prices in Davis to drop faster than the home prices are dropping in surrounding communities?
Matt: I am not suggesting that schools shouldn’t, but trying to offer the full picture.
Matt, adding to supply will eventually bring prices down. The notion that we can’t build enough to do so defies the laws of supply and demand. The only reason that developers still want to build here is because restricting supply has left this the only economically viable place to build in the area. Adding to supply will cause prices to moderate either for the new construction or for the existing supply. A worst case scenario for the developers is a diminishing returns model that will still be profitable for a quite some time. I agree that to build oversupply to bring prices down to the $100/sq ft level we see in Woodland or Dixon would not happen here simply because we have self inflicted restrictions on land available for development.
One of the problems that exists in the housing market is the expectations that people have after the long run up in prices for real estate. Many many people think that it is only a matter of time until the up trend returns. Of course they could be right but only if the feds quantitative easing causes so much inflation that the dollar devalues. Of course this would not really be an increase in intrinsic value but it might be enough to keep more people from being so upside down in their mortgages that they don’t strategically default or be unable to refinance. However if that level of inflation occurs interest rates will tick up. This uptick will also bring prices down since housing costs for a mortgage have two variables; principal and interest rates. Right now the fed is trying to prop up the real estate market by suppressing interest rates so that people can afford a mortgage without putting more existing home owners under water.
The result is that prices won’t be going up for a long time, therefore adding to supply will in fact reduce prices going forward. If developers can still make good money with reduced margins they will build. Since Conagra already owns the land they are in a good position to make money while adding to supply even if it causes prices to come down by doing so. This will make Davis a better place to live; more affordable, more diverse and more economically powerful. Davis doesn’t need a business park it already has one, its called UC Davis. It is a post-industrial powerhouse with a multi-billion dollar annual budget. What we need is housing.
Mr. Toad: What we need is housing.
Huh? Let’s try this again:
Total on the market: 1945
Total sold: 126
How many more do we need?