About 15 years ago, the San Diego Unified School District set a big goal — to create a quality school in every neighborhood.
School district leaders were openly troubled by the fact that more than 40% of students and their families chose schools outside of their neighborhood. District officials vowed to change that with a plan called Vision 2020.
The superintendent at the time, Cindy Marten, described the goal in 2014.
“We don't want your kids on a bus for two hours every morning to get to a school across town,” Marten said. “We say there's no place like home, look in your own backyard."
Vision 2020 dominated district discussions for a decade, but now it’s hard to get anyone to talk about it.
By the Numbers
After years of trying to make schools that were losing families more attractive, did anything change? The short answer: not really.
Fifteen years after the commitment, almost the exact percentage of families are choosing schools outside of their neighborhood. In 2011, 58.5% of students who lived within the district’s boundaries attended their neighborhood school. In 2024, 58.9% did.
In other words, nearly 40,000 San Diego Unified students choose schools in other parts of the city, charter schools or other education options to avoid their neighborhood public school.
The Response
Over the last decade-plus, the district spent billions to rebuild schools. It also dialed back programs that ferried kids out of their local schools and adopted more rigorous graduation requirements.
District officials say there are some success stories of schools keeping local kids. But the leaders of some of the schools still struggling to convince neighbors to stay claim Vision 2020 was unworkable.
Meanwhile, disparities in educational outcomes between different schools and enrollment declines continue. And many young people entering college are unprepared for that level of schooling.
