In a city like ours that is nearing a population of 70,000, the loss of a thousand or more in the school age group may not be a crushing blow, but it sure could have far-reaching implications. As our cover story reports this week, demographer Tom Williams of Enrollment Projection Consultants, a San Mateo firm that measures and projects student enrollments for a number of Bay Area school districts, including Pleasanton’s, reports that elementary school enrollment will start dropping in the coming school years. Overall enrollment also will start declining after it peaks at 14,652 students in 2007 to a projected low of 14,057 at the end of his 10-year outlook in 2015. Although his long-range forecast is for a decline of about 450 students between 2010 and 2015, that’s just an estimate. There is a broad range of possibilities in any 5-10-year time frame that could change the projection. A slight increase is even conceivable during those years. Williams says, however, that if there is a notable deviation from the projections, the more likely scenario is for lower enrollments.
The expected condominium and apartment complexes being considered for Hacienda Business Park and near the new West Pleasanton BART station that will soon be under construction may not be built until after 2015. The aging trends in existing housing could cause a more rapidly declining kindergarten total, with subsequent impacts on the enrollment in the other grades over time. First, of course, the decline would be seen at the elementary school level, but eventually in the secondary grades as well. Combining those possibilities could lead to an enrollment of as little as 13,100 in 2015, a reduction of more than 1,400 students from the current total.
Williams, who conferred with city and school district leaders and also walked the streets with parents and students as they headed to schools, said several factors are combining to cause the student enrollment decline in Pleasanton. First, a large and growing number of three-four-and five bedroom homes are occupied by “empty nesters,” maturing couples whose children have graduated from high schools here and are now in college or working at their careers elsewhere. In many cities, parents welcome this “right of passage” opportunity to move out of their large homes to smaller, easier-to-maintain houses or to retirement homes they have purchased along the way. But not in Pleasanton. Homeowners like it here, their friends and churches are here, and because of Prop. 13, many of them have much lower property tax bases than their neighbors in the same-size homes who recently moved in. Even though their home may now have a market value of $1-million-plus, they’re still paying taxes based on the $375,000 they paid for the home 20 years ago, plus a few percentage points added on to their tax bill since then. It just makes no sense to them to move to a smaller home or out-of-town, so they’re not. With each decision like that, the bedrooms that once held 3-4 school age children, or still could if the house was sold to a younger family, remain childless.
Pleasanton also has a voter-mandated housing cap of 29,000 units, with only about 2,000 left to build. With city officials opposed to more large homes, it’s expected that new construction will be small homes and apartments for owners and renters with few if any children. All this has widespread implications, not just for the school district and the number of teachers and facilities that it has, including the proposed Neal Elementary School, but also for pediatricians, children’s dentists and retail stores that cater to the young. City programs operated by the Youth Master Plan Implementation Committee and the Parks and Community Services Department are focused on a growing youth population. As those numbers dwindle, Pleasanton may need fewer soccer fields and baseball diamonds, and more easily accessible pathways and park benches to serve a baby boomer population that will start to turn 60 this year.
