On February 7, 2022, the SDUHSD held a special board meeting to discuss the high school selection process.
District staff recommends limiting enrollment at San Dieguito High School Academy to 375 incoming freshmen.
The Board is scheduled to decide SDA capacity at its February 10, 2022 meeting.
A ranked-choice selection process could be made available.
Proximity can ultimately be considered as a selection criterion, but timing will limit the District’s flexibility to implement this for the 2022/23 school year.
The Board heard from District staff and an education law attorney regarding the high school selection process, including our high school capacity, laws and practices for lotteries in the event of overcapacity, and other issues.
The District anticipates a capacity issue at San Dieguito High School Academy (SDA).
Current enrollment at SDA is 2,109 students, and there is a consensus that the school is overcrowded. The Administration suggested decreasing next year’s enrollment by 77 students to a total of 2,032. To achieve that enrollment total, while allowing all currently enrolled 9th, 10th, and 11th graders to remain at the school, limits the incoming 9th grade class to 375 students.
This year’s 9th grade class is 561 students, so a drop to 375 is a reduction of 186 9th grade students. During the high school selection process last year, approximately 524 students chose SDA. If this year’s selection process yields a similar result, approximately 149 students will be denied enrollment through a lottery--or about 28% of applicants. Final numbers will not be known until the enrollment window closes on February 18th.
As described by the attorney, the law regarding lotteries states that the only practical way to bypass a lottery for acceptance into a school is if 1) a sibling will attend the school next year, 2) a parent’s primary place of employment is the school, or 3) there are circumstances involving the threat of harm or danger to a student. With those three limited exceptions, any lottery must be random.
One specific area that cannot be considered is proximity. Surprising to me, the District is apparently not allowed to take proximity into consideration during a lottery. Someone who lives 10 miles away could be admitted, just by chance, but not someone who lives across the street from the school.
However, through my own research and after questioning the attorney, I do believe there is a process available to draw a boundary around SDA and allow everyone within that boundary to be accepted and bypass any lottery. Whether we want to do that or not is a decision left to the Board, but I do believe it can be done. The attorney seemed to admit as much under questioning but said it could be a year-long process to complete. I’m not convinced of that timeline. In any case, it could be difficult to do, and probably not possible for this selection period. I will press on that idea at the next Board meeting this Thursday. I do not necessarily feel I will succeed, so parents of students wishing to attend SDA should prepare for a lottery.
A second item I brought up was the opportunity to have a “ranked-choice” lottery. As the process exists today, each student must pick one and only one high school. If they choose SDA and are not chosen in the lottery, then they are assigned their boundary school, either Torrey Pines or La Costa Canyon.
A simple and easy reform would be to allow students to have a first choice and a second-choice school. If you do not get your first choice, the District will attempt to place you into your second choice rather than automatically placing you in your boundary school.
This was clearly illustrated during a discussion with Bryan Marcus. Suppose a student prefers SDA as a first choice but has a very strong preference for one of the academies, perhaps because of the 4x4 schedule. Today they face a tough choice. They can choose their favorite, SDA, but run perhaps a 25% chance of being placed at LCC. If, however, they choose CCA, they will probably be accepted. This may make for a difficult decision.
By allowing students to submit a first and second choice, the student could ultimately be accepted into their second choice, CCA in this example, if they do not get selected for their first choice. Although this may only help a few students, this simple reform can be implemented with very little effort. I will advocate for this change on Thursday.
Our discussion highlighted two “meta-factors” that bother me and that I will focus on going forward.
Part of the pushback I received from the Administration during the meeting was in the form of “it’s too late in the process to change”. The Administration has on numerous occasions brought decisions to the Board that turn out to be a Hobson’s Choice – you, the Board, can choose what to do, as long as you select the choice the Admin presented. When I learned about the bell schedule last year, it was too late to change. I am anticipating that on Thursday I will hear the same thing about requiring ISPE students to be “pre-Olympic or pre-professional” in their sport – it’s too late to change. I, and our Board, must do a better job of holding staff accountable for allowing sufficient time for the Board to make policy changes.
The second is a lack of clear understanding of the governance of the District. For many years the Administration, in conjunction with a compliant Board, drove the decision-making process. I’ve heard too many times that the Board should only be concerned with “policy” and not “operations”, and then they use the term “policy” to generally mean somewhat vague and high-level goals, such as “Keeping students safe is a top priority”, or “We treat all students equitably”. They explicitly don’t like Board input on the bell schedule, the high school selection process, school capacity, curriculum and pilot course offerings, ISPE qualification criteria, and a host of other issues. These ARE policy questions. Voters elect Trustees to run the District, and that covers anything the Board deems important. The Board is the voice for the community. If the Board only acts as a rubber stamp to staff recommendations, the community has no influence.