Speaker 1: (00:00)
San Diego unified as the state's second largest school district serving more than 121,000 students, but it is just one of 42 school districts in the county. 11 of those districts serve fewer than a thousand students. And the smallest district has an enrollment of 32, an investigative report by the voice of San Diego found this proliferation of school districts is more than just a quirky, fun fact. It could be a waste of money, resources, and a holdover from the bad old days of segregation. Joining me as voice of San Diego education reporter will hunts ferry will welcome back.
Speaker 2: (00:38)
Thanks for having me, Maureen 42, 2
Speaker 1: (00:41)
School districts in San Diego seems like a lot. Did that number surprise you?
Speaker 2: (00:45)
Yeah, it did. It's always kind of surprised me a little bit. You know, I've been covering education here for a little more than three years and, um, I'm from North Carolina there. We have basically one school district for per county, even in the bigger metropolitan to areas. And so I've always been fascinated in this setup that we have in San Diego county of 42 school districts and kind of what that means for students
Speaker 1: (01:12)
Now, besides San Diego unified, which are the largest districts in the county. Well, you've got
Speaker 2: (01:16)
Sweetwater in the south bay. It's the next biggest 40,000 students roughly it serves just high school. Powerway unified is the next biggest.
Speaker 1: (01:27)
And of course you found the smallest too. Tell us about Spencer valley school district
Speaker 2: (01:32)
Spencer valley served last year 32 students, and that's basically enough students to fill one classroom in a lot of school districts. And the funny thing about Spencer valley is that it's sandwiched inside of Julian union high school district and Julian union elementary school district. Those are both really tiny as well. So for these five schools out in east county that are all, you know, in the same area, you have three distinct and school districts.
Speaker 1: (02:04)
Now you point out in your report that all of these districts have to have the same type of administrative staff. They all have to have a superintendent and a school board, no matter how small they are.
Speaker 2: (02:16)
We have quite a few school districts here in the county that just operate one school. But even though they only have one in school, they still have an elected board of education. They have to pay to run those elections. They still have a superintendent. They still have an attendance compliance officer. So there's a lot of duplication in that administrative work. Definitely
Speaker 1: (02:39)
Tell us about the difference in per pupil funding. In these various districts.
Speaker 2: (02:44)
I found a huge difference in the amount of per pupil funding that these school districts get. If you look at the 11 smallest districts in the county, each of those have less than a thousand students on average, they get about $23,000 per student that they serve. If you look at the biggest other 33 districts, they get about 13,000 per pupil in state funding. And so it's almost twice the difference in per pupil funding that you see among these school districts, because there's like baseline funding that comes from the state. And when you have such few students that translates into a lot of dollars. And so, you know, it's a worthwhile question to ask, is this the kind of funding disparities that we wanna see in our schools? And how
Speaker 1: (03:33)
Did all these different school districts develop
Speaker 2: (03:36)
California around 18, fifth D I believe, um, created the right to a public education and school districts started popping up all around the state. And so at that time, you know, housing itself in various communities was already pretty segregated. Frequently. People of one race lived over here and people of another race lived over there, and that might be just around the corner, but it was still very segregated. And when the school district boundaries were being drawn, they were usually being drawn in a way that kept some people on one side of town and the other people on the other side of town. And so we ended up with these school districts, you know, with segregated populations and the thing about having a bigger school district, you know, if you've got a small district that cuts out one community while keeping in another, if you make it bigger, then you have the opportunity to balance school populations.
Speaker 2: (04:39)
And, and there's a, a lot of reasons. That's a good thing. You know, research shows that high poverty schools can be a very challenging place to learn. In one thing you can do about that is you can try to put more resources into high poverty schools, make sure they get more money for the counselors they need and for the teachers they need. But the other thing you can try to do is make sure there aren't high poverty schools to begin with. And the way you could do that is by expanding some of these school district boundaries and making sure you mix up these student populations more and integrate them more.
Speaker 1: (05:14)
Do we see school district boundaries having an impact on segregating students today?
Speaker 2: (05:19)
One of the most interesting examples you might look at are the Escondido union school districts and the Powerway unified district, those districts, but up against each other, they're right next to each other, but they're very different in terms of their diversity of students. You know, Powerway has less poverty and it's much more white, about 40% of its students are white, right? And, uh, Escondido is much more Latino district. Uh, it only has 20% white students and it has, um, more poverty and, you know, Powerway unified has this like great reputation as a school district in San Diego, right. People really want to go to Powerway and it's not exactly that same reputation in Escondido. You know, that's just a really classic example of a place where, what would we think about these school districts, if the diversity and then were different. And do we like the fact that there's this segregation butted up right against each other, right. Did in two districts butted up right against each other.
Speaker 1: (06:23)
I've been speaking with the voice of San Diego education reporter will hunts will. Thanks
Speaker 2: (06:28)
A lot. Thank you, Maureen.
