Every week between now and the November Election, the Vanguard will ask the District 2 Candidates (the only contested council election this year) one question. They are asked to limit their response to 350 words.
Question 7: Traditionally schools have been treated as a separate silo from the city and city council, however, concerns about declining enrollment and out of district transfers are impacted by city housing policies. As a member of the city council, how would you seek to address this issue?
Linda Deos
The issue of declining school enrollment in Davis is closely tied to city policies, particularly around housing. While our school district and city are different entities with different responsibilities, tools, and goals, ultimately the outcome of one heavily affects the outcome of the other. It’s important that the City works with the school district to ensure our schools and students thrive. Davis has an incredible reputation for the quality of our public schools; declining enrollment threatens that reputation.
The most important thing the City can do right now to help our schools, particularly with declining enrollment, is expand affordable, family-friendly housing options. Declining enrollment is often driven by families being priced out of Davis due to the high cost of housing. By promoting the development of more affordable housing, especially multi-bedroom units suitable for families, we can attract and retain families with school-age children. This could include zoning for mixed-use developments near schools, encouraging infill projects, and working with developers to ensure that new housing is accessible to a broader range of income levels.
Our schools’ funding is reliant on ADA or average daily attendance. In tandem with declining ADA, we have also seen an increase in out-of-district transfers. This can help as a stop-gap to prop up funding, but these are students and families commuting to and from Davis, which means they likely are not shopping here and their tax revenue is being spent on other communities. These families also don’t pay into the parcel taxes that help fund our schools. If we provide affordable and available housing, many of these families would prefer to live in the town where the parents work and their kids go to school.
If we do not address this issue, the school district will face hard questions about cutting programs, increasing class sizes, and even closing schools. These solutions will certainly have a negative impact on the reputation of our schools, and more importantly, the quality of education our children receive.
Ultimately, by making housing more affordable, strengthening partnerships with DJUSD, and investing in family-oriented community infrastructure, we can help stabilize and even increase school enrollment, ensuring that both the city and its schools thrive together.
Dillan Horton
During my 2020 campaign, I held a three-hour long roundtable discussion that focused on the struggles experienced by Davis families. The overwhelming consensus reached was that it is too expensive to raise a family in our city.
While many school issues are not within the city council’s purview, I feel that it is still within my power to fight for Davis’ students. As councilmember, I plan to use my office to ensure Davis addresses the socio-economic burdens that affect family life. In particular, the cost of childcare, after-school programs, and summer camps is a burden on struggling families. This is why I plan to work with the Parks Department to create more availability in these programs for low-income and multi-child families.
All three of our local governments – city, county and school district – are experiencing fiscal shortfalls. Right now, our district relies on commuting educators and intra-district transfers from outside of our city to sustain our K-12 schools. Our city must create workforce housing for our teachers. This can be done on land that the city or school district already owns – like the soon-to-be-former school district headquarters on Fifth Street. Quick and responsible solutions that repurpose our existing infrastructure will go a long way towards achieving my equitable housing goals!
For families to settle in our city, they also require local job opportunities. My economic development plan means supporting unions and businesses in creating living wage jobs, removing barriers to starting and owning a business, and bringing back a business liaison position so businesses have the tools they need to succeed.
City Council deserves an advocate like me who has extensive experience fighting for working-class families and delivering results. It is everyone’s responsibility to make Davis an accessible town where people from all walks of life can choose to raise a family. Davis will only attract more families to our city when people can finally afford to live here.
Victor Lagunes
Strong schools—from UC Davis to our T/K–12 public schools—have always been central to Davis’s identity. We pride ourselves on being a community that values high quality public education for all. Many families moved here specifically for our schools and because Davis is a wonderful city for raising kids.
Our interests as a city, therefore, are deeply intertwined with schools. I have experienced Davis as a university student, a teacher, and a step-parent with kids in our district, so I have a well-rounded perspective on this overlap. As DTA President, I have been directly involved in conversations about declining enrollment, problem-solving to avoid closing any of our campuses, pursuing solutions for workforce housing for DJUSD teachers and staff, and the challenges our school families face staying in-district due to rising housing costs.
The long-term vitality of our district is critical for our community. Our district has an in-boundary declining enrollment of roughly 11% over the past 10 years, much higher than the statewide average of 3%. Much of this decline relates directly to housing availability and cost: causing many families to move out of district. To keep our school district healthy, we need to ensure living in Davis is in reach for families with children—which is the primary reason I decided to run for city council.
I have made housing a central focus of my campaign, and will work to diversify our housing stock to meet different needs and price points to make housing more accessible for all people, especially young families. We need to keep our students’ families local so children can bike to school for the health of our kids and the planet, and so we can help our grown children return to Davis and rejoin our community.
If elected to city council, I already grasp all the issues at stake. As a board member of the Davis Community Action Network, with its mission of affordable and climate-conscious housing, I have already discussed this issue with residents, developers, and housing experts, and I have researched solutions other cities are putting into action. I’m ready to get to work.
If we didn’t have Measure J several thousand new homes would have been added over the last 24 years that would now be keeping our schools full.
Dylan almost gets this right. The school district isn’t going to leave the offices on B St. anytime soon but the district has other land that is shovel ready for development like the land by Harper Junior High. It also has surplus land it could trade so that it could be developed while it’s current use is transferred to another place like Nugget Fields.
If DJUSD were to build housing for its own staff on its own land we could kill two birds with one stone.
Recent legislation makes school district surplus lands easier to develop.