San Diego Schools with Few Students Targeted Amid Budget Woes

Voice of San Diego reports:

Closing half-empty schools is a political hot potato that San Diego Unified has passed from year to year without action. But as school budgets wobble, Superintendent Terry Grier is reviving talk of closing elementary schools with low enrollments to slash overhead costs and floating new ideas to replace the shuttered schools.

Grier has suggested diverting the students to neighboring schools and using the vacant sites for programs that boost enrollment, such as magnet schools. His favored programs include specialized schools designed to lure students from private schools and charters back to the district and alternative high schools that aim to stop dropouts.

He imagines remaking Crown Point Elementary, a school with only 150 students, to draw students from across the entire school district, offering the individualistic, creative curriculum made famous by Maria Montessori. Other schools with low enrollments could be replaced by small high schools where students earn college credits and hone professional skills, from the culinary arts to car repair, Grier said.

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In 2005, San Diego Unified estimated that an elementary school with less than 400 students costs roughly $400,000 that could be saved if the school were closed. Thirty-six elementary schools currently enroll fewer than 400 students in pre-kindergarten and higher, at a net cost of $14.4 million.

The sheer number of tiny schools is one reason why San Diego Unified has a higher school administrator-to-student ratio than Los Angeles or Long Beach schools. One-sixth of Long Beach elementary schools enroll fewer than 400 students, compared to about one-third of San Diego elementary schools.

Year after year, the problem has cropped up during discussions of how to cut costs at San Diego Unified. Plans to close three small elementary schools were scrapped in 2004. No further proposals have made headway.

"If you had 10 percent less business, you think you'd shut down some of your locations," said William Wright, vice chairman of the district's audit and finance committee. Wright favors ranking schools based on test scores and expenses for maintenance and capital, not enrollment, to decide which schools should be closed.