Enrollment of Minorities Up in S.D. Schools

A 10-year racial trend in San Diego’s city schools continued this fall as minority student enrollment increased and white enrollment dropped, according to statistics presented to the Board of Education.

Led by an increase in the number of Latinos and Filipinos, minority enrollment jumped by 3,065 to 63,331 students. Minorities comprise 55.2% of the San Diego Unified School District’s 114,696 students in 1986-87, up from 53.7% last year.

The number of white students in the city’s schools dropped by 633 to 51,365, or 44.8% of the district’s students.

For the current school year, Latinos make up 21% of the district’s students; blacks make up 16.1%, and Pan-Asians--including Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Indochinese and Pacific Islanders--make up 17.74%, Frey said.

While the number of blacks increased by 376, their share of the student population remained steady at 16.1%, he said.

The increases in the number of minority students “will have implications for future planning, curriculum offerings, staffing needs and recruitment into integration programs,” said George Frey, assistant superintendent for community relations and integration services.

With 1,225 additional Latinos, 511 additional Indochinese and other students from the Far East, Frey predicted that schools will be called on to offer more bilingual and English-as-a-second-language training. “That’s not just materials, but also your staff,” he said.

It may also become more difficult to attract white students to predominantly minority schools as part of the district’s magnet school integration program, Frey said.

The statistics presented Tuesday appear to differ with a demographic study issued in February by Criterion Inc., which predicted that the proportion of white students in the district would stabilize at 42.2% by the year 2000.

Frey noted that the white proportion of the district has fallen steadily for a decade. “If it continues at the rate it’s falling, I dare say that we would reach 42.2% by 1990,” he said.

Debbie Rackerby, a senior analyst for Criterion, said that the demographers anticipate a new influx of white students in the district during the next decade from areas such as Mira Mesa and University City.

“Those homes are going in right now, and they’re probably going to be building for a few more years in Mira Mesa and the Golden Triangle,” Rackerby said.

Despite the increases, the San Diego district maintains one of the highest white populations of any of the nation’s 10 largest school districts, Frey said.