Families in the South Bay now have a better idea of how their school district will change next year after Central Elementary School closes.
On Wednesday, the South Bay Union school board approved a map that adjusts school attendance boundaries throughout the district. Those boundaries determine which school students attend, depending on where they live.
Central Elementary has 316 students this year. Next year, students who would have gone to Central will go to either Bayside, Emory, Mendoza or Oneonta, according to the district. Mendoza could see the largest population growth, with an additional 120 students.
Other schools will see their populations grow, too. The boundary lines around Sunnyslope Elementary mean 46 additional students in the neighborhood could attend the school. That increase will likely be temporary, said assistant superintendent Rigo Lara.
“It's a temporary improvement,” he told the board. “But with the declining enrollment challenges that we continue to have, the projections continue to show that the enrollment will continue to drop.”
Schools getting additional students won’t need to add classrooms or other facilities next year, according to the district. That’s because enrollment will still be far below their peaks in the late ‘90s and early 2000s.
District data show Sunnyslope had 916 students in 1997. Next year, it will have 369.
Mendoza had 1,256 students in 2000. Next year, it will have 536.
“We still need to look deeper at the root causes of the declining enrollment,” said Imperial Beach Charter School teacher Rose Saldana. “I know there are things like birth rate issues that are going on across the state. But we are also hemorrhaging students to other districts, and we're also losing students to private schools and other charters and other options that are not just leaving San Diego as a whole.”
The district plans to close two more schools by 2031. Those schools haven’t been chosen yet, but administrators have proposed Sunnyslope and Berry Elementary.
