With Enrollment Down, Districts Start Shuttering Schools

The Barbie and Winnie the Pooh backpacks are gone from the outdoor coat racks at El Rancho Elementary School, and classroom doors are locked -- but not just for summer vacation. El Rancho will not reopen in the fall because the number of students in Goleta schools has been steadily declining.

The decision to shutter this 320-student campus has roiled the otherwise quiet Santa Barbara County neighborhood in the shadow of the Los Padres mountains. Children are disoriented, parents say they feel betrayed, and administrators remain stressed by the painful process.

Such difficult choices are becoming more common in California, driven largely by a 15% drop in birthrates in the 1990s, and exacerbated by state budget cuts and prohibitive housing costs. Although some urban districts such as Los Angeles Unified are still expanding, and struggling to find room for a growing number of immigrant children, about half the school districts in California are experiencing significant declines in enrollment, education officials said. Fewer students translates to fewer state dollars, at a time when the budget crisis has already reduced aid to many districts, and prompts moves to close schools to save money.

In the last school year, 57 California public schools -- mainly rural and suburban elementary campuses with enrollment dips -- were closed at least temporarily, compared with just six the year before, according to the state Department of Education. There are 7,490 public schools in the state.

Although they could not offer specific figures, education officials and demographers predicted that the number of closures would increase over the next two years because of enrollment declines. Some districts are trying to avoid the unpopular decision to close schools by moving to combine grade levels or postpone construction.

“It’s going to get worse. I think we’ll see more closures because the budget cuts are going to hit harder next year and enrollments are continuing to decline,” said Shelley Lapkoff, a demographer who specializes in enrollment forecasts throughout the state.

In Goleta, a chocolate brown wooden sign with the words “El Rancho School” printed in white letters, greets visitors. The cluster of one-story buildings, painted in fresh shades of forest green and eggshell white, is on a cul de sac in a quiet neighborhood. After school, parents once walked their children home.

Susan Portier was among the parents who fought unsuccessfully to keep the neighborhood school, protesting that close friends will be split up among several campuses.

“I moved here for this school. It’s an outstanding school,” said Portier, a mother whose 5-year-old daughter will have to ride a bus to another campus in the fall. “She’ll have to make new friends and she’s very shy. Why do we have to uproot kids?”

The district says “ ‘it increases efficiency,’ ” she said. “How does this increase efficiency? This isn’t the Ford Motor Co.”

Ida Rickborn, superintendent of the 4,100-student Goleta Union Elementary District, said the district has seen enrollment decline 5% to 9% over the last few years. Closing El Rancho will save $300,000, money that could preserve small class sizes elsewhere, she said. The campus will be either leased, sold or mothballed.

“People become very, very attached to their schools. It’s an important institution in their communities,” she said. “But I am not sure they understand the depth of need of the district.”

Elsewhere in the state, Vacaville and Eureka city school boards in Northern California, as well as Capistrano and Irvine in Orange County, are among those closing schools in the fall. Santa Cruz and Southern Humboldt County districts are discussing similar plans.

Pam Lindstrom, a principal at Worthington Elementary School in the Eureka City School District, plans to retire now that her campus will be out of business this fall.

“There is the sense of sadness, really facing that we won’t be working together as a staff again,” Lindstrom said. “So we’re dealing with it one day at a time.”

Masy Adnani, a mother of two students who attended Vista Verde in Irvine Unified, which recently closed, said she loved the small school that was seven minutes from home. Adnani and her husband attended every board meeting to protest the closure and the much longer rides their children face.

“We are not happy; I don’t know what we will do. We have no choice. I guess we have to follow what they tell us to do,” she said. “We fought it, but nobody listened to us. We fought it so hard.”

Enrollment has declined in almost half of California’s districts, according to the California Counties Superintendents Assn.

Those not experiencing the dip are mostly communities that are building new homes, have an abundance of jobs and are still attracting immigrants, said Sue Burr, director of governmental relations for the association. “You still have those kinds of pockets of growth,” she said. “But that is not population growth per say, it is more migration growth.”

Demographers say schools in California and the nation are coping with a trend toward smaller families and the timing of the large baby boom generation’s having the last of its children.

Administrators say the loss of some students to private and charter schools, as well as prohibitive housing costs in some areas, which discourage families from moving in, also have an impact.

In 1990, there were 611,666 births in California, compared with 527,371 in 2001, according to state data. Since then, numbers have been relatively stable.

The pattern across the country is similar to that in California, although in some other states the birthrate rose slightly in the late 1990s, a shift that some demographers attribute to a strong economy. Last week, the National Center for Health Statistics reported that the national birthrate fell last year to its lowest level since 1909.

The enrollment dip is a “double whammy” for many rural and suburban districts already facing cuts in state funding, Burr said.

State funds, based mainly on the number of students, will not support the current number of campuses and all of their fixed costs such as maintenance, office staff and cafeterias. Burr projected that dozens of California public schools may be shuttered in the coming school year.

“If you have two schools with 250 students each, from a purely economic perspective it would make sense to combine them,” she said. “But from a parent and community perspective, they feel very strongly about school community they have created. It’s wrenching to try to close schools because you do lose that community hub.”

Many districts have cut back in elementary schools, where the drop in enrollment is sharpest, but stopped short of closures.

For example, in the Pasadena Unified School District, all of the 20 teachers laid off recently because of budget cuts were elementary instructors. During the 1993-94 school year, there were 1,956 kindergarten students enrolled in the Pasadena public schools. By this last school year, that had dropped to 1,752, according to the state.

As a result, Pasadena’s Cleveland Elementary School this last year combined a fourth- and fifth-grade classroom.

Inside Cleveland’s “combo class” one morning, 22 fifth-graders sat on the left side of the room and nine fourth-graders sat on the right. Teacher Mark Tremper read the book “Holes” to students. Usually, Tremper has to multitask, scrambling to instruct both grade levels, he said, adding that it can be “very stressful.”

“I have to juggle two different sets of materials, two sets of books,” he said. “I’ve learned little tricks, like put one group to work, and then teach to the other on the other side of the room.”

Los Angeles Unified still is growing at a rate of about 10,000 students a year, mostly in middle and high schools, according to district data, and is hiring teachers pink-slipped from other districts. There is a huge need to build schools to accommodate severe overcrowding; 228 of the L.A. Unified’s 689 campuses are on year-round schedules, where students are distributed among three or four calendar tracks with rotating vacations.

But the district still feels the demographic shift at some lower grade levels. In 1995, there were 61,559 kindergartners enrolled in L.A. Unified, compared with 57,228 in 2002.

Some schools are combining classes, and about 20 elementary schools are adding a sixth grade to their kindergarten through fifth-grade campuses, taking some heat off middle schools.

At Cheremoya Avenue Elementary School in Hollywood, 85 kindergarten students were enrolled nine years ago. By last school year, that number had dropped to 48.

Principal Christopher Stehr said housing and rental prices in the neighborhood have jumped, forcing some families out of the area. Cheremoya, previously a kindergarten through fifth-grade school, will extend to include a sixth-grade class of about 70 students in the fall, he said.

“It’s better for some of the little ones who might get lost in the shuffle” of a big middle school, Stehr said.

The population shift can offer some temporary relief in a few neighborhoods, but not enough to scale back the Los Angeles district’s ambitious construction plans, officials said.

On the other hand, the more affluent 14,500-student Vacaville Unified may be forced to reevaluate its construction plans, said Supt. John Aycock.

Voters approved a $101-million bond two years ago to modernize and build schools, including a third high school. But the district did not expect to lose 290 elementary students in the last school year, and it projects a loss of another 170 in the coming year, he said.

Already, the district closed two schools during the last school year, Aycock said. Now he wonders whether the new high school will be needed.

“When you have growth, then you’re in fat city as far as a school district is concerned,” he said. “When you are having declining enrollment, you are in a world of hurt. Combine that with the cuts, and you’ve got a compounded problem, and you’ve got to take drastic measures.”

But Vincent Ferrandino, executive director of the National Assn. of Elementary School Principals, said he doesn’t think districts should be so quick to shutter schools because declining birthrates will probably reverse. “It may not be the best decision to close a school today when you’re going to have to reopen it in five years,” he said.