School Is Back in Session: 4 Education Stories to Follow

Believe it or not, most schools in San Diego County are back in session. If the new school year snuck up on you, that’s likely because start dates have been getting earlier. San Diego Unified moved its first day of school up, while some local schools have been in session for weeks already.  

In any case, each school year brings new challenges. Here are the four stories I’ll be following.  

Budget Deficits  

Over the pandemic, districts were flush with state and federal cash. Now that federal funding is expiring, that’s no longer the case. That was one of the big reasons San Diego Unified projected such a massive budget shortfall this year. For those who’ve forgotten, a year ago they projected it could be as high as $128 million. 

The district eliminated hundreds of positions, encouraged some staff to retire and ultimately will spend $114 million in reserves to make up the remaining gap. Still, the district also granted big raises to teachers and despite issuing hundreds of layoff notices in May, officials ended up walking many of them back.  

That was great news for teachers but may not end up being as great for the district’s bottom line. That’s because even as they projected a massive budget deficit this school year, district officials have said next year’s deficit will be even bigger – $176 million to be exact. The year after that, the deficit will grow again to $230 million.  

That may spell trouble for ambitious programs the district has embraced, like community schools. Community schools are schools that provide additional resources to students like food pantries or even health services. Those are funded with a mixture of state and district money, but that state money will only run for five years. Afterward, the district will be footing the full bill – if it can afford to. 

Pandemic Recovery Efforts 

Efforts to recover from pandemic losses have been slow. Metrics like test scores and chronic absenteeism have certainly improved, but there’s still a lot of work to be done, particularly when it comes to chronic absenteeism. After all, as I’ve long droned on about, chronic absenteeism is the most pressing issue facing schools as they try to dig themselves out of the pandemic hole because academic interventions mean nothing if kids aren’t in class to receive them. That’s doubly true because schools get funded based on student attendance, so the more often students are absent, the less money a district gets. 

The good news is that districts and schools have put a lot of work in and have implemented research backed strategies to improve attendance like revamping how they approach home visits so they’re more compassionate and less punitive and working to make school a more welcoming and exciting place to be. They’ve made progress, but chronic absenteeism is still much higher than it was before the pandemic. The tough fiscal situation many districts find themselves in may also spell trouble, as districts may be forced to shed positions or programs that were moving the needle on recovery efforts. 

One big challenge is that it’s still unclear if high levels of absences are just the new normal at schools. Do students and families now feel school is more optional than they did before the pandemic? Some reporting seems to suggest they do. If that’s the case, it’s bad news. 

Enrollment Changes 

As I dug through data this week, I noticed something that shocked me: San Diego Unified’s enrollment increased between the 2023 and 2024 school years. That’s a big deal. For those who don’t know, like many school districts, enrollment at San Diego Unified has been dropping for more than a decade. The rate of enrollment decline increased over the pandemic, when schools went virtual.  

There are a whole lot of reasons for the decline. Ever since the Great Recession, people have been having fewer kids. San Diego’s high cost of living also seems to have pushed people some families out of the area.  

But before you get too excited about what this says, you should know that the bulk of the enrollment increase seems to be limited to one grade: universal transitional kindergarten. UTK is a new grade created by California and available to all 4-year-olds meant to prepare kids for the big bad world of kindergarten. Prior to last year, however, enrollment numbers for UTK and kindergarten were combined, so it’s tough to say exactly how the increase breaks down. 

This increase shouldn’t come as a total surprise. The state essentially opened public school to a whole new age group, so you’d expect total enrollment to increase. The real test will be whether kids who attend San Diego Unified’s UTK program stick with the district for the long haul. District leaders have said that hope factored into their decision to ignore the tiered rollout the state set up and open the grade to all 4-year-olds on day one.  

Considering enrollment impacts how much state funding districts get, this is an important stat to keep an eye on.  

Cellphone Bans 

Los Angeles Unified, the biggest school district in California, made news last month: its board voted to ban cellphones on its campuses. The move was a long time coming. Research has long shown that not only are cell phones incredibly distracting in classroom settings, their usage also has a slew of negative impacts on the social and emotional wellbeing of teens and children. Shortly after LA Unified passed its ban, Gov. Gavin Newsom endorsed the concept of cellphone bans in a three-sentence press release. 

One thing I couldn’t have predicted is how broad LA Unified’s ban is. They decided to not only ban student cellphone usage during class but at all times on campuses. That sounds pretty hard  to enforce, but what do I know? 

After the ban had passed, I called San Diego Unified Board Member Cody Petterson to ask if the second-largest district in California was considering something similar. Turns out, district officials are. Petterson said district officials are still in the early stages, so it’s unclear what exactly will be proposed, but he told me, “the likelihood is very strong that there will be some form of [cell phone] exclusions from some settings.”