On Thursday, February 17 the SDUHSD Board considered the issue of student capacity at San Dieguito High School Academy (SDA).
Background
All of our high schools are open to any student who resides in the District. One need not live in a specific area to attend any specific high school.
Incoming freshman go through a selection process where they tell the District their preferred high school. The deadline to make that selection was Friday, February 18th at 4:00pm.
Every student is guaranteed a spot in their “Boundary School”, either La Costa Canyon or Torrey Pines, based on their residential address. Acceptance into a school other than their Boundary School is subject to available capacity at that school. Should there be more demand for enrollment at a given school than there is capacity at that school, a lottery must be conducted to allocate the limited number of student slots.
For several years the available capacity at our four primary high schools has exceeded student demand, meaning that every student could attend the high school of their choice.
That is, until this last year, the 2021/22 school year. A year ago, when the school selection process was conducted, demand for acceptance into SDA was unexpectedly large, leading the school administration to recommend a lottery to limit the incoming freshman class. Because the social cost of denying a child the ability to attend their school of choice is so large, the Board stepped in and stopped the lottery at the last minute. Every child wishing to attend SDA was allowed to enroll.
This put a strain on operations at SDA, although the school has been able to adapt.
As the District administration was considering the current high school selection process for next year’s enrollment, they considered contingencies should the demand for SDA again be high. After considering several factors, the administration recommended a cap on the incoming Freshman class at SDA of 375. If more than 375 students applied to SDA, a lottery would be used to select which students would be admitted.
Current Situation
This is a problem for me. If we allow students to select the school they would like to attend, we should not deny them their selection if it can be avoided. This is especially true if a student lives close to their high school of choice. It doesn’t make sense to me that someone who perhaps moved to Encinitas to attend SDA, and lives across the street from the school, might be told that they cannot attend because of the results of a random lottery.
I asked about the flexibility that the Board might have in using proximity as a factor and was told that proximity cannot be considered for enrollment. What they were really saying is that proximity cannot be used as a factor in a lottery, but they did not tell me that we could achieve the same result by turning SDA into a boundary school. Then we could give local families first priority in attendance.
At a prior Board meeting I asked our attorney about the legal process for turning SDA into a boundary school and was told that it is a long and involved process. When I asked how fast, legally, we can get it done, he didn’t know, nor was he able to describe the legal process we must follow. The Board was forced to conclude that since we did not have enough time to make this change, we will follow the same process we did last year with an “open enrollment” with no proximity preference.
At the Board meeting on February 17th, the administration asked the Board to approve a “not to exceed” number for the incoming freshman class at SDA of 375 students.
I made the point that with the selection process window closing in less than 24 hours, why don’t we wait and see how many students select SDA before we decide on overall capacity. Superintendent Ward did not want to wait and have another Board meeting next week and advocated that we choose a not-to-exceed enrollment number at this meeting.
In my view, the cost of turning away students is severe, and we should try to minimize that in any way we can. At the same time, I recognize there must be a maximum capacity, whatever that number may be.
After some discussion and debate, Board Trustee Mossy proposed a cap of 428 incoming students. Although this was higher than the 375 recommended by the administration, I did not detect significant pushback from staff. I did not believe at that point that there was Board support for a higher number, so I voted along with Trustees Bronstein, Young, and Mossy to accept 428 as an initial cap on freshman acceptance into SDA. President Muir voted no and stated that she was against a lottery at any number. Although I agree with her sentiment, there must be a cap at some point. What we must decide is what that number should be.
I will immediately begin advocating to start a process to provide a proximity priority at SDA. I will add this to the agenda of the next Board Meeting so we can fix this problem going forward.