Student enrollment is up in the district, but not by much, according to Senior Director of Pupil Services Rich Puppione. As of the Sept. 12 school board meeting, total enrollment for all 17 schools in the Pleasanton Unified School District was 14,574–73 more students than the same time last year.
Most of the growth can be seen at the high school level. Amador Valley High, however, has 100 more students than last year, compared to Foothill High’s “3 or 4.” Another area of imbalance at the high school is the number of freshman students. Amador’s incoming class is the largest class in the district with 703 students, 157 more than Foothill’s freshman class.
The discrepancies were attributed to the board’s unanimous decision in January to allow an open enrollment option for students in the Fairlands Elementary attendance area. Typically, the area is assigned to Amador, but many students choose Foothill. At that time, the board expected open enrollment to balance the difference, since an imbalance as a result of open enrollment had not previously occurred.
Now that there is a considerable discrepancy, Trustee Kris Weaver said she was concerned about the possibility of it becoming a trend.
“I don’t like that the freshman class is larger at Amador,” she said. “This could continue to happen. At the time [of the open enrollment approval], we agreed to put it back on the agenda to talk about changing the attendance areas of our high schools and we need to do that.”
Superintendent John Casey said the issue should be revisited and rethought because “the action we took was creating some areas of choice and it didn’t give us the numbers we wanted.”
As for the rest of the district, elementary and middle school numbers are down. Village High School–the alternative high school program made up of mostly juniors and seniors–is well under capacity, though Puppione said the enrollment will increase as the year progresses as some students from Foothill and Amador Valley high schools will move over to the alternative school for various reasons which will in turn reduce the class sizes of Amador and Foothill.
When projecting enrollment numbers, Puppione compared the senior and kindergarten class sizes. Any difference, he said, would have to be made up with students enrolling from outside of the district. These numbers vary by year, and some students wait until the start of school to register. This year, summer enrollment was 256, down by about 22 from last year. Elementary school students account for the majority of that total, whereas the high schools only had 20.
State funding and staffing depend on the number of enrolled students, and the unpredictability of these numbers presented quite a challenge for school officials. Both Puppione and Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Sandra Lepley watched the enrollment numbers all summer to prepare for this school year.
“We weren’t as confident that we’d meet that growth as in previous years,” Lepley said. In preparing the budget, they made considerations for a potential decrease in enrollment. “We worked extremely well together this year because it was a new challenge for us. Moving from a potential decline into at least a manageable growth has been an interesting ride.”
Clerk Pat Kernan was impressed with the money saved and accuracy in the budget preparations. “Historically, I think we’ve done a very good job [preparing for the budgets],” he said. “To me, that is what this report is about.”
