Ojai Losing Students, Cuts Teachers

Declining enrollment is causing one Ventura County school district to cut 12 teaching jobs next year, which officials blame on high housing prices and stagnant growth.

Ojai Unified, a small district serving about 3,900 students, expects to lose 190 next year--nearly double last year’s enrollment dip of 100 students. The accompanying reduction in state funding requires eliminating about 12 full-time teaching positions, Supt. Van Riley said.

Most of the cuts will come from employees retiring, transferring or leaving on their own, but district officials have sent layoff notices to three elementary school teachers.

“It’s huge and it’s a major concern,” Riley said. “They’re great teachers, and we would love to keep them.”

Economists say what is happening in Ojai could be a warning for other school districts in Ventura County as people with children are priced out of the area for lack of new housing.

Housing prices “are much too high, which is preventing families or anyone from moving in, and therefore it will have an impact on schools,” said Mark Schniepp, director of the California Economic Forecast in Santa Barbara.

He said part of the enrollment decline comes from a basic demographic shift. Numbers of children ages 5 to 11 are peaking, but will drop off for the next several years.

This trend is exacerbated in areas of high housing costs with little new development, including Ojai, Schniepp said. In January, the median price of a home in this bucolic enclave at the foot of Los Padres National Forest was $372,000.

“It may be a trend in play, and Ojai’s just the first to make some racket here,” Schniepp said. “I would look for this to continue all over the county.”

School districts from Santa Barbara to Oak Park have seen similar--though less drastic--dips in enrollment since 2000.

However, most of those agencies are still showing some enrollment growth. In Conejo Valley Unified, about 300 new students enrolled last fall, and officials expect about 200 new pupils in the next school year.

Officials in Conejo and other districts said they don’t believe Ojai’s enrollment drop will necessarily be repeated in their communities.

“They’re not much larger than us, so that’s kind of scary,” said Robert Fraser, an assistant superintendent in Oak Park Unified School District. “But I’m a bit more of an optimist due to our proximity to Los Angeles.”

Fraser said a crucial factor is the hotly debated Ahmanson Ranch development, which would put 3,050 new homes very close to the district on the northeastern border of Ventura County. “Whether that project goes in will have a major impact on us,” he said.

Last year, Oak Park opened its high-achieving elementary schools to out-of-district transfers after a temporary moratorium in an attempt to boost enrollment.

That solution won’t work for Ojai, however. Officials in neighboring Ventura Unified for the last few years have denied new requests to transfer into Ojai’s schools, where about 300 Ventura students already attend, Riley said.

The district is exploring options to recapture students from the area’s many private schools, including offering alternative and independent study programs.

And Riley said even as the Ojai district further tightens its purse strings in the face of statewide budget cuts, school officials are committed to maintaining educational excellence.

“We’re going to have smaller schools, but we’re offering the same programs and stability,” Riley said. “We will try to keep the reductions away from classrooms, and I think we can do it.”