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After another year of dramatic enrollment losses, the Los Angeles Unified school board president is considering the possibility of closing or merging schools.

The nation’s second-largest school district now enrolls 408,083 students, according to figures published Jan. 31. In the 2023-24 school year, LAUSD enrolled 419,749 kids; the year before that, 429,349.

“I’m kind of fearing talking about it, because people are just going to go berserk,” said LA Unified Board President Scott Schmerelson of decisions to close schools. 

Schmerelson also insisted he has not given up on finding ways to increase district enrollment with programs that would attract new families to LAUSD schools. 

But, he said, enrollment has fallen so low that many of the district’s schools can’t provide the services students require.

To preserve the quality of instruction, Schmerelson said, some of the district’s 785 public schools may soon need to be combined or closed. 

“We’re just getting worse and worse as far as enrollment goes, and average daily attendance,” said Schmerelson. “Every time a kid comes to school, we’re paid for that day. And when they don’t show up, we’re not paid for that day.”  

LAUSD has been losing students since it peaked in size at 746,831 in 2002. District officials have talked about tackling the enrollment drop for almost as long. Losses accelerated during the pandemic and then slowed, but have since gone up again.  

LAUSD has made a number of efforts to attract new students, mainly based around the idea of offering attractive schooling choices to local families, a district spokesman said. The enrollment declines this year were smaller than expected, according to the spokesman. 

But shrinking schools are bad for students. 

Like many U.S. public school districts, LA Unified is funded on a per-pupil basis. So when the district loses students, it loses income.

Schools with too few students don’t receive the funding to offer extracurricular activities and a variety of enriching classes. They retain fixed staffing and facilities costs, so operations become more expensive on a per-pupil basis, as enrollment shrinks.

Schmerelson, a veteran LAUSD educator and administrator who was elected president of the district’s school board last year, believes the district’s enrollment crisis is its most pressing problem and has vowed to tackle the issue in his last term.

He said he expects the board to soon begin discussing the sticky issue of closing or combining under-enrolled schools. Those that become too small, he said, with fewer than 100 students, aren’t viable from a cost or programming standpoint.

In a statement, a Los Angeles Unified spokesman said that there are three schools in the district with fewer than 100 students. The spokesman said the district will not be combining or closing schools this year.

Decisions to close schools are often controversial with the families they serve and the staff they employ. Closing a school is seen as a last resort in many districts, not only because it represents the loss of an asset, but also a loss to the community.   

Enrollment decline is a nationwide problem. School closures in response to such declines have recently prompted pushback in cities such as Denver and San Antonio.

In Inglewood, an independent school district in Los Angeles County, plans to close schools have sparked bitter protests.   

But in Los Angeles, where enrollment has been declining for more than 20 years, many fear closing schools is inevitable.

Conditions such as falling birth rates and rising housing prices have forced LA’s enrollments down for years, and those forces can’t be stopped without seismic changes to economy and demography, said Pedro Noguera, dean of USC’s Rossier School of Education. In addition, independently operated charter schools have enrolled thousands of LA students.  

In other words, get used to it. And it’s not just in LA. Enrollments are falling in districts around the country, thanks to the same forces that are driving down enrollment in LASUD, Noguera said.

“This is the future,” said Noguera. “Declining birth rates, plus families with children who can’t afford to live in the city.”

LAUSD has no choice but to figure out how to consolidate schools, said Noguera. But, if officials are strategic, he said, they should see it “not simply as a loss of a school, but as an opportunity to create schools that are better equipped to serve the community.”

Any changes to schools in LAUSD would be considered by the board with Superintendent Aberto Carvalho, who in the last school year warned that closing schools was possible.

Schmerelson said he expects the board will soon discuss combining schools due to falling enrollments, while also working on new solutions to attract new students.   

Former LAUSD board member David Tokofsky, who consults with districts and labor groups on policy and operations, said the LA Unified’s focus on attendance in the years since the pandemic has been laudable, but now it needs to shift its attention to enrollment.  

Tokofsky said LAUSD needs to be fighting enrollment declines with more aggressive plans to attract families, and maximize resources in shrinking schools.

Decisions to close schools are fraught with hazards, he warned.

“This requires urban planners and big thinkers,” said Tokofsky. “Otherwise, the whole school board will get recalled.”

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