[quote=DaCounselor]Thanks for the excellent chart UCGal. Does it include all the PISC and VEEP kids or is it just straight open enrollment data? In either event it does not encompass the continuity students although I am sure that data is out there somewhere. Overall I would hazard a guess that the total number is significant as LJ is an affluent area and about 1/3 of the kids at Muirlands and LJ High are on the free/reduced lunch program.
As for the “lesser students” remark, I admit I could be completely off-base in jumping to the assumption that the test scores and academic performance of the kids coming in from outside 92037 are lower than the locals’. I suppose that data is out there too. How each person feels about the facts surrounding enrollment at the LJ schools is up to them.[/quote]
DaCounselor, I don’t know if you live in LJ and/or are raising a family there, but if you are, how would you feel if LJ High and one of their elem schools were shut down? If there was no VEEP, CHOICE and various magnet programs to move District students around, certainly, LJ could do with one less elem school and bus their dwindling HS-age population elsewhere, no? There is no longer enough homeowners and tenants in LJ “proper” (actually NOT a “proper” because it is in the City of SD) to fill its schools there as there once was. The vast majority of today’s families can’t afford the exorbitant prices of the RE there and haven’t been able to for more than 20 years. As such, LJ will be inhabited by more and more of the “retired set” every year. In any case, the younger Gen X and Gen Y parent-crowd isn’t going to buy or rent a 1500 sf “cottage” when they can get 2500 sf elsewhere for less than half the price. They are also turned off by the advanced age of LJ’s housing stock and the complexity and cost of remodeling there.
Closing schools where there is no longer enough of a local student population to attend them has happened in many metro areas in the country. Given the direction the State’s budget has been taking in recent years, don’t think this can’t happen to SDUSD.
Be glad for the District’s transfer-in programs keeping schools open in areas where there are not enough students to make it pencil out. These transfer opportunities aren’t offered to the District’s student-slackers. They are offered to the cream of the crop of the various attendance clusters they hail from. The vast majority of these kids KNOW they are very fortunate and will continually perform in school and ride two buses each way there and back for as long as they have that opportunity.
Conversely, the “surfer dude” who grew up in LJ and could care less about school has a right to attend all of the LJ schools by virtue of his residency. He may or may not end up graduating there but later obtain a GED or graduate from LJ High with a 2.0 GPA with or without successful completion of his A – G requirements for CA public university admission.
Just because a kid grew up in LJ doesn’t mean he/she actually has any drive to accomplish anything in life.
