Katrina Young’s Last Regular Board Meeting
Student Enrollment Continues to Decline
Improved High School Selection Process Reviewed
Beginning Contract Negotiations with the Teachers Union
Contract Approved to Audit the High School Foundations
Ethnic Studies Unit 3 Approved
The final board meeting of the SDUHSD Board before the swearing-in of a new Trustee took place on November 14.
Katrina Young’s Last Regular Board Meeting
The Board recognized Katrina Young for her four years of service on the SDUHSD School Board. First elected in 2020, she decided not to seek reelection to the Board. The new Trustee for Area 2 will be Jodie Williams, who will be sworn into office at the December Board Meeting.
Student Enrollment Continues to Decline
Associate Superintendent Bryan Marcus provided an overview of the historical student enrollment throughout the District and a forecast of future student enrollment.
In the last three school years, enrollment has fallen at an increasing rate of 1%, then 2%, and 2.5% last year. Next year’s enrollment is forecast to fall an additional 3% compared to this year.
This decline in enrollment could be due to a decrease in the total number of students living in the district (I’d call that demographics), or it could be due to a loss of market share (or capture rate: the percentage of students who choose to attend public school). If the student decline is due to demographics, this will not hurt our District because our funding per student will increase. Although that would also be true if the decline is mostly due to a decrease in the capture rate, that would indicate that our value proposition is declining. I’d like additional data to understand this better.
Improved High School Selection Process Reviewed
Some of you may remember questions I had as early as 2021 regarding our high school selection process.
Our policies and procedures were not friendly to parents and students. Some students were denied enrollment at their high school of choice because they missed the deadline to enroll by a few days (mind you, this is a February deadline for the start of school in August!). Other students were not able to attend their school of choice because they didn’t move to the San Dieguito district by February if they chose to complete their 8th grade at their existing school and move over the summer. In another case, a rising junior was prevented from staying in their school when their parents moved just outside the district border (we allowed rising seniors to stay, but not rising juniors).
At this board meeting, our administration presented draft policy changes that appear to move in the right direction to be more family and student friendly. The document was difficult for me to follow and appeared unnecessarily complicated, so I asked the administration to make it simpler and more straight-forward. This item is scheduled for a vote at the December board meeting.
Beginning Contract Negotiations with the Teachers Union
Both the Board and the Teachers Union (the San Dieguito Faculty Association, or SDFA) provided their “opening positions” to start the process of negotiating the next contract with the union. The exiting contract expired on June 30, 2024. It is not unusual to negotiate the teacher’s contract after expiration as the final contracts are always retroactive.
As an aside, I believe it is a structural flaw in our California education system that the teachers union can give unlimited money to elect trustees of their choice who, once elected, then immediately are asked to approve the negotiation strategy and final contract with that same teachers union.
Contract Approved to Audit the High School Foundations
As many readers surely know, two CCA students, under the name Ravens for Transparency, wrote a report raising concerns related to the policies and practices of the Canyon Crest Academy Foundation. This has already been written about and reported extensively in the press, so I won’t repeat the issues here. The Board decided to audit all of our high school foundations. I submitted a supplementary document that asked a few questions to ensure that the audit would properly address the concerns raised by the students. This upset Trustees Smith and Young. You can view their short speeches here:
After a brief discussion, the vote to approve the audit with a modified scope passed 5-0.
Ethnic Studies Unit 3 Approved
The Board unanimously approved Unit 3 of the Ethnic Studies curriculum. The fourth and final Ethnic Studies Unit will be reviewed during a Board study session on November 21, 2024, and I expect the Board to vote on Unit 4 at the December Board Meeting.
With all four units complete, the plan is for the Administration to come back to the Board in the spring with feedback from staff and students regarding the course. We must offer the course beginning with the 2025-26 school year.