Whirled class
Sacramento city schools keep losing students and funding as teacher-contract negotiations kick off
By Cosmo Garvin
cosmog@newsreview.com
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The district wants to cut retiree health benefits and build reserves. Teachers and parents want smaller class sizes. So does Brown: His school-finance-reform plan, the Local Control Funding Formula, requires districts to reduce class sizes to 24 students. Right now, Sac city schools have 31 students per class in the lower grades, 32 in kindergarten.
District leaders say they can’t afford smaller classes. “There is no feasible way for the district to get to 24 to 1 without going bankrupt,” said Ken Forrest, the district’s chief business officer.
But can the district really afford not to reduce class sizes?
It’s losing money because it is losing students. It’s losing students, in part, to suburban districts and to charter schools, where class sizes are smaller.
If you look at Forrest’s budget projections, the district stands to gain under LCFF—which favors districts with high numbers of poor, minority and English-learner students.
But those gains are largely erased by declining funding due to losses in enrollment. The dwindling student body cost the district $5 million this year, and is predicted to cost another $7 million next year. Enrollment has dropped by about 10 percent in the last 10 years.
Some of that is just changing demographics and a bad economy. The kids who weren’t born because the economy tanked in 2008 would be starting kindergarten about now. Many parents moved out of the area for better job prospects.
But some wounds are self-inflicted. In 2002-2003, charter schools accounted for less than 2 percent of enrollment. Last year, charters had 10.5 percent of district enrollment and are expected to reach 11.3 percent this school year.
That hurts the district’s bottom line, because the per-pupil funding from the state goes with the student to the charter. This is not meant to open the whole debate about charter schools—some are better than others. (And the usual disclosure here: Bites is married to a SCUSD teacher and is generally pro-public education.)
But there’s no debating that charters impact the district budget. While overall enrollment has dipped 10 percent in the last decade, once charter schools are figured in, it’s about an 18 percent drop in the same period.
Last year’s school-closure debacle hurt enrollment as well. The district has been averaging about 10 percent loss of students to other districts and charter schools each year. (The total drop in enrollment each year is smaller, because new students are coming into the district as others
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