DJUSD likely has 2,300 fewer students today than it would have if Davis had grown at the level projected before Measure J.
The Davis community is being forced to grapple with a difficult reality: enrollment in the Davis Joint Unified School District is falling, and will continue to decline over the foreseeable future.
These consequences are forcing current and increasingly heated policy discussions about school closures, boundary realignment, program contraction, and declining state revenue tied to attendance.
One explanation from those who simply oppose projected housing projects in Davis has been that Davis is merely swept up in broader statewide demographic forces.
Birth rates have fallen across California, family households are shrinking, and many school districts — urban and rural alike — are losing students. That framing allows some to believe it is simply caught in a demographic tide that no local policy could have prevented.
But the record tells a different story.
If we look backward — not at statewide averages, but at Davis-specific planning history and Davis-specific growth limitations — it becomes clear that the district’s enrollment crisis is not primarily the result of changing statewide demographics.
Rather we can clearly see that it is the result of 25 years of constrained housing production under Measure J that prevented the city from growing at the pace planners expected, families desired, and the region assumed.
In 1999, before voters adopted Measure J, the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) projected the City of Davis would grow from around 61,000 residents in the late 1990s to approximately 75,000 residents by 2010. That projection reflected Davis’s historic growth rate and the trajectory established in city policy.
But after Measure J passed, outward residential growth slowed dramatically. Instead of reaching the projected 75,000 residents (by 2010), Davis sits today just under 67,000. In other words, the city grew by roughly 6,000 people instead of the 14,000 expected, leaving a population gap of about 8,000 missing residents.
When translated into housing, using Davis’s average household size of approximately 2.5 people per home, that gap equates to about 3,200 homes that were never built.
Those missing homes have direct consequences for DJUSD. The most recent yield methodology — developed by Davis Demographics and EPS using real-world data from the Cannery — estimates that each single-family home generates approximately 0.723 students.
Cannery itself proves the point. With roughly 600 units, it is now producing close to 300 students in DJUSD — a yield rate that contradicts claims that new housing no longer generates families or school-aged children.
Apply that same yield rate to the 3,200 missing homes, and the math becomes unavoidable:
That means DJUSD likely has 2,300 fewer students today than it would have if Davis had grown at the level projected before Measure J. And that number is striking because it almost exactly mirrors the district’s current enrollment decline.
The enrollment crisis is not the natural result of demographic winter — it is the predictable result of development policy.
Some will insist that Davis never would have grown to 75,000 residents, Measure J or not. Others argue the community has repeatedly reaffirmed its growth skepticism at the ballot box, and that alone makes the outcome “organic.” Still others maintain that even if housing were approved, families today might not choose Davis at the same rates they once did.
But those claims run headfirst into observable facts.
Demand did not disappear — Davis simply refused to meet it. The housing market didn’t collapse — supply was restricted. Families didn’t stop wanting to live in Davis — they were priced out or forced to look elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the same statewide demographic pressures cited to excuse enrollment decline did not prevent other school districts with more permissive land-use policy — including nearby Woodland, Elk Grove, and West Sacramento — from maintaining or even growing enrollment during the same period.
The difference was housing.
And now, as DJUSD confronts the consequences, the city is in a fundamentally uncomfortable position. Because once you remove statewide trends as the primary explanation, what is left is both simpler and harder to ignore:
Davis chose this outcome.
The question then becomes whether the community wants to continue accepting decline as its trajectory, or whether it is prepared to correct course.
Correcting course does not mean building endlessly or discarding environmental values. It means acknowledging that a thriving public school system requires a stable or modestly growing population of families — and that such stability requires housing supply that matches demand.
Two projects now under consideration — Village Farms and Willowgrove — represent the first realistic opportunity in decades to reverse the enrollment trend rather than merely manage its consequences. Both projects would add substantial family-oriented housing. Both would generate new students using the district’s existing yield methodology. And combined, their timing, scale, and unit mix align almost perfectly with the level of residential growth necessary to stabilize DJUSD.
Village Farms alone is projected to generate roughly 701 students — again, based on the same yield factors that Cannery now demonstrates are reliable. Willowgrove, using the same modeling assumptions, would produce hundreds more. Together, the two projects would represent the equivalent of one Cannery every four to five years — which is almost exactly the pace needed for Davis to maintain enrollment and meet state housing requirements.
The state’s mandate for housing production and the district’s need for enrollment stabilization are not separate policy debates. They are the same debate, viewed through different institutional lenses.
Davis is now experiencing the cost of a quarter-century of slow-growth governance. But the future is not predetermined. The choice before the community now is the same one it faced in 2000 — whether Davis will be a city that grows intentionally and sustainably, or whether it will continue to freeze itself in place and manage incremental institutional decline.
The enrollment crisis was not inevitable — it was a choice.
Building Village Farms and Willowgrove is not simply about housing policy. It is about whether Davis will remain a community with a viable, vibrant public school system.
If the city wants to get back on track, this is where it begins.
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A choice you have consistently supported by consistently supporting the process that got us here.
The schools used to have enough students with the housing Davis has now.
So now Davis must grow in order to keep feeding the school system?
Yes Keith, because people stay in their houses much longer than they have children in them. My neighborhood has plenty of empty nest homes.
So why not just close a couple of schools?
Will Davis forever have to keep building outwards just so its schools are filled?
Because the region has a growing economy.
Growth in a regional economy is a different issue, which can be discussed. But what you’re advocating for is continued/forever growth just to feed a school system that doesn’t want to adjust to a changing reality.
“Don’t be afraid of change.” (And make no mistake – the status quo WAS forever growth.)
Those days are over. 1.6 kids nationwide. The “malthusians” (as you put it) have succeeded, though no one is really talking about that very much.
Because UCD is one of the main engines of that growth.
UCD’s staff is not increasing.
But truth be told, the UC system itself is drawing from a drastically-declining college student-age population.
I’m thinking of a word, staring with a “p” (and is also a method of preparing eggs, or engaging in illegal hunting activities).
In any case, you’re looking in the rear-view mirror. Spring Lake, for example, has already accommodated a lot of newcomers to the area (including recently-hired UCD employees, I assume).
In any case, the community and state college system is in serious decline, while UC is treading water (last man standing, so to speak). (Can’t help but think that the value of a UC degree is going to further decline, when those who used to go to “lesser” schools are increasingly attending the UC system, instead. Whatever happened to those SAT tests, anyway? Deemed racist, or some such nonsense?)
But getting back to the issue at hand, UCD (at the Davis campus) is not increasing its staff.
Ron O
Ron G is correct that UCD is growing and is a regional economic engine. But was has happened is that we’ve pushed UCD employees out of town. Since 2006, UCD has employed just over 11,000 on campus. That was with 27,000 students in Davis. At that time 5,600 or 50% lived in town. In the latest travel survey, 4,150 or 37% live in town. We’ve lost 1,500 faculty and staff in that period.
I’ve made this point over and over–50% of Davis job holders commute into town, of which 80% come from other Yolo County cities, Vacaville and City of Sacramento. Given that we have about 1,000 interdistrict transfers from those communities and many/most are from UCD employee households, its obvious that these families want to live in Davis but can’t afford to do so.
If we assume a similar 15% exodus for the remaining 20,000 workers in Davis, that’s another 3,000 jobholders who would prefer to live in Davis. That’s 4,500 households that used to live and work in Davis who now only work here. That’s the latent housing demand that has NOTHING to do with growing Davis outward–it’s about serving the people who were in positions that use to pay enough to live here too. That’s what we’re trying to get back too.
Ron O keeps acting like a temporary hiring freeze is going to be a permanent condition.
Do you hear what you’re acknowledging?
What you’re stating is that the need always declines over time (up to a certain point) in mature neighborhoods/cities.
That’s also true of “new” neighborhoods.
So even for families, they don’t need the services that schools provide (except for a relatively brief period of time).
In general, schools will have to adjust to that reduced need. It’s happening throughout California and elsewhere. And since people are also having fewer kids, that’s further reducing the need.
It’s simple math, when you come down to it.
It is true that Davis could “poach” some students from other school systems by building more, but no kids are being “created” as a result of building more housing on farmland.
And again, even those new developments would experience declining need, over time.
“The schools used to have enough students with the housing Davis has now.”
UC Davis enrolls around 15,000 more students now than it did in 2000. Many live on campus, but that kind of growth along with the more limited growth in the City of Davis means that more dwellings are occupied by UCD students.
With the recent growth in student housing, this might have reversed (students moving out of single-family dwellings into newly-built megadorms in the city and on campus).
In any case, it sounds like something that DJUSD should have been concerned about when it was occurring, in regard to UCD’s impact.
But again, it’s still the wrong goal in the first place (trying to force the city to increase its size because the school district doesn’t want to decrease its size).
If there’s any issue which shows the illegitimate forces at work – trying to force the city to grow due to self-interest, it’s this one. And from what I can tell, the “sprawl for schools” campaign isn’t working outside of directly-interested parties. Essentially a small minority who think its a crisis – within their own echo chamber, at least.
“ trying to force the city to increase its size because the school district doesn’t want to decrease its size”
This is false and inflammatory. The district is simply raising an issue – they have no ability to *force* anything. Moreover, the DJUSD needs match up with the state housing requirements. So the framing here is just false.
DJUSD is engaging in a de facto “sprawl for schools” campaign. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous.
The state’s housing “requirements” are fake, and have zero chance of being implemented statewide. They also do not “correspond” with DJUSD’s desire to avoid downsizing.
The state’s fake requirements have nothing to do with the school district, though you might be giving the school district ideas (as well as the developer). Or maybe it’s vice-versa – they’re providing you with ideas?
“Sprawl for Schools and the State”? (There’s a winning campaign slogan.)
Tell us again how many Canneries need to be built in order to satisfy the state’s future requirements (which haven’t even been created, yet). And then tell us if that’s actually going to happen.
If that’s what you believe, I have a Cannery myself to sell to you.
That’s hardly a use of force
Ron O.: “In any case, it sounds like something that DJUSD should have been concerned about when it was occurring, in regard to UCD’s impact.”
DJUSD has been making city staff aware of enrollment trends for years, well before the pandemic.
Not that this should matter (since forever-growing a city is simply not sustainable), but a lot of non-residents students are ALREADY attending DJUSD.
So even if the absurd theory (that a significant portion of those families would move to a new development in Davis) was true, enrollment would not increase since they’re ALREADY ATTENDING DJUSD.
And yet, that’s still not satisfactory for the self-interested school district.
Another 1,600 housing units on the way at the Woodland technology park, in addition to the current ongoing construction. Which will also add more DJUSD students.
100 housing units at Chiles Ranch, another couple dozen or so at the former skilled nursing facility on Pole Line, and ONGOING TURNOVER of EXISTING HOUSING. (The latter is actually the only sustainable path forward. At some point, that reality is going to have to be reckoned with. The question is how much more farmland does Davis and other communities want to destroy, before they fact that fact.)
“SUNDAY COMMENTARY: THE ENROLLMENT CRISIS”
So now school enrollment is also a crisis?
The word “crisis” used to mean something.
“The word “crisis” used to mean something.”
Not since I’ve been reading the Vanguard.
The new definition of “crisis” is: Not even a “problem” in the first place. (That change in definition is one of the changes that shouldn’t be “feared”.)
But if it was up to me, I’d definitely close down the school that’s accompanying this article – no students.
Maybe some of the Vanguard readers would prefer this title:
“SUNDAY COMMENTARY: THE OVERSIZED SCHOOL SYSTEM CRISIS”
New progressive media now brands every ongoing problem as a “crisis”. Housing crisis. Democracy crisis. Climate crisis. Now we have a Crisis crisis. The word is used to signal urgency when the situation is often long term and complicated. The point is to “force” action by making normal policy debates sound like five-alarm fires.
The word “crisis” shuts down discussion. If everything is a crisis, then hesitation becomes immoral. Nuance becomes obstruction. Anyone who wants data or a measured approach gets painted as uncaring. The language is a tool to speed decisions and sidestep accountability for any details.
A true emergency ends up sounding like just another talking point. Constant alarms ringing drains trust and attention; it makes people tune out exactly when they should be tuning in. Paint David Greenwald, “The Man Who Cried Crisis”.
Cheers for measure J. Governor Newsom lives in Marin County, a slow growth area if ever there was one. Developers, and their allies, will keep coming up with “reasons” to overbuild and overbuild and overbuild.
TA, but remember to vote “Yes”, because if you don’t vote Yes every time, you may lose the right to vote! . . . “yes every time” :-|
Honestly, the forces in support of sprawl should be encouraging everyone to vote “no”, altogether per the logic put forth on this blog (as summarized in your comment).
That way, they’ll lose the right to vote “no” that much sooner. (But they might still retain their right to vote “yes”.)
It’s an odd world they live in, when yes means no (to something – not sure what), and no means yes – forever more (or something like that).
That’s what happens when you only build 25 SFH per year for 25 years.
I thought it was 35 single family houses per year, over 20 years = 700 houses.
Would you like for me to refer you to some small towns in California that have probably built “none” during that period? Or, close to none? And yet, don’t have a blog describing that as a crisis or even a shortcoming? (Including some in the Bay Area?)
One of them has closed down a school or two, to boot. (One of those small sites recently sold as a housing site – as is. And yet, it somehow survived.) I can refer you to it if you’d like (a very small school building and land sold for less than $600K).
I believe that another site is essentially condos, now – with some pretty hefty HOA fees.
Though truth be told, they probably should have given it to whatever local tribe might lay claim to it, if they engaged in “land acknowledgements”.
Where exactly is the local Patwin tribe, these days?