Bay Area schools see families leave cities, flock to suburbs
Categories: US Education News
Thirty years ago, the Bay Area suburb of Dublin’s eastside was little more than miles of ranchland.Today, it’s lined with new houses and apartments home to thousands of new-to-the area families. On a sunny afternoon, the city of 61,000’s playgrounds, cul-de-sacs and sports fields are buzzing with children, and the roads and strip mall parking lots are packed with minivans and electric cars.The city’s building boom following the Great Recession resulted in the Dublin Unified School District tripling its number of students since 2000 – the only Bay Area district to do so while the region as a whole saw a 3.7% increase from 2000 and 2019. Along with the rest of the state, Bay Area enrollment plunged around 6.2% during the pandemic to 859,619 students – the lowest it’s been in more than 20 years. Families flocked to the Tri-Valley city of Dublin for its new homes, new jobs, well-regarded schools and proximity to other job hubs in Silicon Valley, Oakland and San Francisco. The construction of thousands of new homes and apartments across five new developments allowed the 12,491-student district to build seven new schools, with two more on the way to bring the total to 15. The U.S. Census Bureau deemed Dublin the fastest-growing city in California between 2000 and 2019, and one of the 15 fastest-growing cities in the country.“It’s almost like a new city,” said Ram Bora, whose boys are in kindergarten and first grade in Dublin Unified schools. Bora moved there from Los Angeles about five years ago and lives in one of the new eastside developments. Growing suburbs with modest regional growth between 2000 and 2019 doesn’t tell the whole story, however. Districts that serve more low-income students in cities with less new construction lost thousands of students during that time, only exacerbating existing budget woes.Funk has seen what it’s like at both growing and declining districts. Before taking the superintendent position at Dublin Unified, he served in the same role in San Jose’s East Side Union High School District, which saw an 8% enrollment drop between 2000 and 2019. West Contra Costa Unified itself saw an enrollment drop of 18.5% between 2000 and 2019. Nearby Oakland Unified lost more than 30% of its enrollment during that period, while expenses increased. Oakland Unified’s decades-long budget woes prompted the district’s school board, in February, to approve a proposal to close, consolidate and merge 11 schools to adjust to the enrollment drop. The decision was met with hunger strikes and other ongoing protests and actions by members of the community and the local teachers union, the Oakland Education Association. The Bay Area’s largest district, San Francisco Unified, saw a 10% enrollment drop between 2000 and 2019. The city had an influx of new residents during that time, but the number of households with children decreased. In a 2017 policy brief, County Supervisor Norman Yee chalked it up to a lack of affordable family housing, making the city less desirable than other Bay Area cities for incoming families.Districts like those that serve higher percentages of students from low-income families could suffer another major financial hit next year, Funk pointed out. Fewer families are submitting household income forms to their districts, he said, because the forms are no longer required to access free school meals now that California is providing free meals to all students. That will inevitably reduce the amount of supplemental funds districts qualify for under the state’s Local Control Funding Formula.