Study projects enrollment decline for school district in coming years
A rendering of the proposed reconstruction of North School. A lawsuit pending against the district has alleged that the district inflated enrollment figures to promote passage of a bond that may be used to renovate North. Image courtesy HBCSD
Enrollment in the Hermosa Beach City School District is likely to decline slightly over the next five years, according to the latest district forecasts.
HBCSD’s decision to offer, then end, an all-day kindergarten program over the past five years, which district officials said pushed enrollment up and down respectively, made forecasting unusually difficult. But the data now appear to be stable enough to forecast that city schools will go from the current level of 1,360 students to 1,260 students by 2022.
“This makes it a challenge for us to predict. Will the real cohort change please stand up?” said Dean Waldfogel, senior vice president of Decision Insite, a demographic consultant hired by the district, at last week’s school board meeting.
Waldfogel said that the firm offered a “conservative” projection, which was likely to underestimate enrollment. This forecast is relied on for budgeting because districts receive funds based on attendance, and it is easier financially to have too many students than too few. A “moderate” projection with higher estimates is what districts would typically use for facilities planning, because of the need to ensure sufficient desks, but the moderate projection is traditionally reserved for larger districts, Waldfogel said.
The downward trend mirrors enrollment declines forecasted throughout California but carries special resonance for Hermosa, where voters last year passed Measure S, a school facilities bond intended to relieve overcrowding at Hermosa View and Hermosa Valley. Along with construction at the two existing campuses, Measure S provides funds to reopen North School, a district property that until this year was rented out to preschool and adult school programs.
The plan to reopen North is due in part to the difficulty of projecting the school-age population, which in Hermosa has historically varied far more than the population of the city in general. In the early 1960s, Hermosa schools had more than 2,000 children born at the height of the baby boom and had six campuses to serve them. But by the mid-1980s the district reached a demographic nadir of barely 600 kids. The district had sold three of its campuses in the preceding decade, and shuttered North in 1987. But enrollment began steadily rising again in the past decade, prompting the vote on Measure S and a possible second life for North.
HBCSD is currently in the midst of preparing an Environmental Impact Report for a proposed reconstruction of North but is facing a lawsuit from a collection of Hermosa residents over various aspects of the school bond. The lawsuit, filed in August, alleges that the district “paid Decision Insite to show high enrollment and high projected future enrollment when the bond was being debated and voted on so that a Yes vote would seem more necessary to voters.”
That claim is based on differences in enrollment projections offered before and after the Measure S vote in June 2016. A Decision Insite projection dated May 2015, included as an exhibit in the suit against the district, forecasted that the district would reach 1,580 students by 2019; a projection in November 2016 forecasted 1,234 students. There were also slight variations in the historical enrollment data.
Decision Insite did not respond to multiple calls and emails requesting comment. In an interview at the time the lawsuit was filed, HBCSD Superintendent Pat Escalante said the Decision Insite relied on data provided by the district, and that the difference was largely attributable to changes in the district’s all-day kindergarten offerings.
Last week’s presentation, while containing no mention of the lawsuit, partially supported this reading. Waldfogel “conservative” five-year projection calls for the district’s total enrollment to hit 1,324 in 2019: a decline from the current level of 1,360, but 90 students more than the 1,234 students in the November 2016 projection. The increase was apparently due to the firm’s decision to regard 2016’s kindergarten enrollment of 104 as a statistical outlier; 2015 had 126 kindergartners, while 2017 had 121.
“We reacted a year ago and said, ‘Oh my goodness, we’re in a pretty heavy decline situation.’ Then this fall, you didn’t get back up to quite 2015, but you got close enough to call it ‘stable’ and treat the 104 as an anomaly,” Waldfogel said.
The district launched a full-day kindergarten pilot program for the 2011-12 school year. District officials have previously said that the program enticed families in which both parents worked to come to the district, and most of those students remained in city schools for ensuing years. Total enrollment grew each year following the program’s rollout before peaking in 2014 at 1,469 students.
The extra students added to crowding at the district’s two campuses. By the 2014-15 school year, more than one-third of district students had classes in temporary trailers or converted classrooms, including a space that once served as a faculty lounge.
Escalante has said that, if North were to reopen, the district would try to resume full-day kindergarten.
Although not referenced the lawsuit, the board’s response to the presentation revealed that it remained sensitive to criticisms made during the contentious Measure S Campaign. In response to a chart showing the largest rates of population change over the next five years to be in the south end of Hermosa, President Maggie Bove-Lamonica asked whether that trend was expected to continue in the long run. Waldfogel was unable to answer, but bond opponents have often said that reopening North School and drawing students from across the community located would increase traffic. And Board Member Monique Ehsan said that, even at the lower projections, the district still had far more students than the two current campuses were designed for.
“We’re still overcrowded,” Ehsan said. “These are our enrollment trends and projections, but as of today, we are hundreds of students overcrowded, we house them in trailers, we don’t have space for them.”
Decision Insite is an Irvine-based firm that handles demographic projections for more than 120 school districts, including about 80 in California. Waldfogel said he was aware of only one district in the state forecasted to have enrollment gains in the coming years.