News
News Release:
San Diego Enrollment Increase Halts Six-Year Decline
District Initiatives to Attract Parents and Students Pay Off
October 10, 2007

Bucking statewide and national trends for large urban school districts in high cost communities, San Diego Unified School District increased its student enrollment this fall.

District enrollment increased across the board. Overall enrollment including charter schools and preschools located within district boundaries increased from 133,831 to 135,053. Pre-K through 12th grade enrollment, excluding charter schools, increased from 119,504 to 120,136. In a strong sign that the district may sustain these increases, enrollment in preschools increased by more than 800 students.

These increases ran counter to the district’s own demographic predictions which had forecast a decline of more than 2,000 students, with no projected increase until 2015. They are in sharp contrast to Los Angeles Unified, Long Beach Unified and many other school districts across California which suffered losses of thousands of students and the millions of dollars in funding they generate.

For Superintendent Carl Cohn, these increases are a sign that two years of initiatives designed to reinvigorate San Diego’s schools and provide parents with choices are paying off. These include a popular initiative transforming traditional elementary schools into K-8’s, the Family Friendly Schools Initiative designed to reach out to families; an expanded high-quality magnet schools program; a summer enrollment center that streamlined enrollment and five new state-of-the-art schools including the flagship Lincoln High School campus with its four “small school” academies that opened this fall.

Said Cohn, “Instead of saying to parents, ‘This is it. Take it or leave it,’ we designed innovative programs from the bottom up instead of the top down. We surveyed parents to find out what they wanted for their children and then worked hard to meet their needs. None of this would have been possible without great teachers, principals and staff working together to make us America’s best urban school district.”

Cohn also noted the impact of achievement gains. “Our work to accelerate academic gains also has our community taking notice.” This year, San Diego outperformed all but one of California’s large urban school districts in meeting the Adequate Yearly Progress targets required by NCLB, increased the number of students passing the CAHSEE and had a record number of schools scoring above 800 on the API.