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Health & Fitness

Enrollment Growth Task Force Background

LASD commissioned a Task Force, comprised of a broad range of community representatives, to study the capacity challenges of the district and BCS. Novel solutions are required and public participation is essential to carry the momentum forward.

Jeff F, Neighbor
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The purpose of setting up this blog is to generate civil discussions about facility ideas to feed back to the school district, the charter school, and the city councils.  I fear that with the continued lawsuits there's little room for board members to fully vet ideas.  A bold new strategy will be required to meet the needs and growth of both LASD and BCS.  Let's use this medium as a way to generate those novel ideas and see what sticks.  Hopefully our elected officials will take note.

Let's start off with some facts generated from the Superintendent's Task Force on Enrollment Growth.   This was a committee of a broad selection from the local public whose purpose was to understand the student capacity challenges and impacts on the current & future education of the children.

Enrollment Growth:  Enrollment within LASD and BCS has been growing for the past 25 years.   In the past 10 years, there was a combined historical growth of 23% (~1000 students).   Enrollment now is as high as it was in the '70s, but with fewer campuses (9 vs 11).  Approximately 1/4th of that growth originated disproportionately from the North of El Camino (NEC) area, while the rest of the growth has been spread across the district.  On a city wide breakout, Los Altos has maintained ~ 60% of the LASD enrollment for the past 15 years (increasing from 1900 to 2500 students), while Mountain View grew from 19% of the LASD enrollment to now 25% (600 to 1100 students) over the same period of time.    When you break this down further into NEC and non-NEC portions of Mountain View, you find that NEC-Mountain View grew from ~ 6% of LASD to now ~12% while non-NEC Mountain View maintained ~13% of the district enrollment.

 

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Dynamics:  To understand not only how the district is growing, but also how to accommodate for future growth, it's crucial to have a good understanding of the above data.   What we found was that NEC is growing at a faster rate than the rest of the district over a small geographic area, while a majority of the historical district growth is located outside of NEC.  The driving mechanism for growth within NEC is apartment and condominium turnover, where yield rates (fraction of units with school age children) have risen on average by a factor of 3 to now ~15%.   Over the next few years a conservative estimate yields over 200 students from existing construction, possibly more in the longer term from planned housing.    Most of these students would be assigned to Almond and Santa Rita Elementary, with little to none to Covington.   Outside of NEC, the rest of the district growth is driven by single family housing turnover, where there is no sign of a slowdown as evidenced by housing sales data and enrollment growth in schools like Loyola (which is near capacity).   Indicators of kindergarten to birth ratios and grade progression enrollment increase gives further evidence of overall growth.

 

Metrics:  To help isolate an ideal solution for the district and charter enrollment growth, one needs to balance what makes LASD schools successful and the cities within LASD a desirable place to live.   LASD has a successful school model that reflects the values of our community.  Some of these features arose organically, but they are now promoted by the school board to maintain excellence in our schools.   These include:

                a)  Maximum school size targets for fewer than 560 students.   Regardless of the school site size, small school population has a benefit on student’s emotional and behavioral well-being, increases teacher connections with parents and students, while behavioral problems found in larger schools are less likely to occur.

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                b) Every school is a high performing school.   Contributing factors include a strong sense of community at each school and socio-economic balance. 

                c) Strong school communities create a sense of identity and social focus, which increase parental involvement and support.   The location and distance of a school site to neighborhoods with a concentration of students is an important factor, with close proximity benefiting commute alternatives.   Continuity of attendance areas is desirable.   When families live in proximity to each other, yet distant to the school, they are more likely to feel connected and involved with the school.

Capacity:  Our schools are serving close to or greater than the number they were intended.  Further, we now have 10 schools on 9 sites, two sites fewer than the equivalent population in '71.    The two Jr Highs have a physical capacity of 750, and both are expected to significantly grow through 2017.  BCS has plans to grow up to 900 students, which with the expected growth of the Jr Highs will place a burden on both sets of schools.

Approach:  Reconfiguring a school by closing has been unacceptable to the broader community.  A solution must address not only the growth from NEC, but also of the rest of the district and BCS as well. 

http://www.losaltos.k12.ca.us/files/user/1/file/enrollment_growth_task_force_report.pdf



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