Optimum Campus Size Doesn’t Fit a Formula

Aside from the occasional new school opening to relieve overcrowding, districts have relied on relocatable trailer classrooms on existing campuses.

Why don’t school administrators simply plan larger school campuses at the outset, to accommodate a greater number of students?

Tom Payzant, superintendent of the San Diego City School District, said there may never be a resolution to the debate within education circles about the optimum size of a campus.

Encanto Elementary School, he said, has had enrollments top 1,500 students in recent years, the result in part of new growth in that neighborhood and the success of its magnet education program that specializes in a mathematics and science curriculum that attracts students even from beyond its own attendance boundaries.

By comparison, most elementary school campuses are designed to accommodate between 600 and 700 students, and a typical high school is designed to handle 2,500 students.

Payzant said the size of the Encanto campus hasn’t hindered the quality of the education there, however.

“The parents and the staff there feel so strongly that they’re making their school work, even with so many students, that they’ve convinced me a campus that large is OK--if there’s a proper program mix and it’s well-organized,” Payzant said.

‘White Flight’ to Suburban Districts

The San Diego city schools will grow by only about 1% this year, he said, and the district is experiencing a small degree of “white flight” into suburban districts.

“Some people are drawn to the life style of the suburbs, and some people prefer the homogeneity they find in the suburbs--in terms of social and economic factors, if not racial and ethnic ones,” he said.

Payzant said he is not sure how many people, when moving to a new area, factor in the quality or size of schools as a criterion when deciding where to live. Other factors--including housing prices, neighborhood type, proximity to jobs and services, climate preference and the like--play a role, too, he said.

But Bob Reeves, the schools superintendent in Poway, suggested that those with enough money to do so are looking to districts like his, with stellar academic records.

Reeves said real estate agents have told them that half the people who purchase homes in his area do so because they particularly seek out Poway’s schools.

Overcrowding Discounted in Poway

Will that influx of new students overcrowd Poway’s schools and jeopardize the very quality these people seek?

Reeves doesn’t think so. “In fact, I think we gain in quality,” he said. “The people who seek these (educational) standards are usually better educated, come from more affluent homes, give back more to the schools and support their kids in school. We feel the rich are getting richer. Who we’re getting are more of the best and the brightest.