Nearly Half of San Diego Unified Schools May Be ‘Underutilized’

San Diego Unified may have “underutilized” about 47 percent of district schools during the 2024-25 school year, according to a report obtained by Voice of San Diego.  

Over the past decade, enrollment decline has buffeted schools across the region. San Diego Unified has been hit particularly hard. As of last school year, district schools had lost about 16,000 students, a nearly 12 percent drop.  

The trend has the power to reshape the educational landscape, potentially draining funds or even forcing school closures or consolidations.  

San Diego Unified officials say there are no plans to close schools, but the new numbers shed light on the impact of those declines. Those numbers, however, weren’t easy to get. District officials repeatedly denied they existed. Even the district’s superintendent hadn’t been shown these capacity figures, despite the numbers coming from a report district officials produced in 2023. 

According to the report, capacity is determined by using a number of data points to project how many students each school can fit. They start with the raw number of classrooms, and subtract ones used for purposes other than regular classroom instruction. Those can include administrative space, special education or after-school programs.  

According to the report, 77 schools – nearly half of the total number of San Diego Unified schools – are operating at less than 70 percent capacity. San Diego Unified has not developed its own threshold to determine which schools are underenrolled, so Voice is relying on a definition created by Chicago Public Schools. 

Digging deeper, nearly 33 percent of district schools are operating at below 60 percent capacity. About 16 percent – a total of 27 schools – are less than half full. Like with enrollment decline trends, many of the schools with the lowest capacity are clustered in the southeastern San Diego and Clairemont areas.  

Some of the figures are striking. 

According to the report, Linda Vista’s Montgomery Middle is only about 31 percent full. While the school has room for 1,105 students, only 337 were enrolled last school year – a 768-student disparity. Last year, Kimbrough Elementary in Grant Hill enrolled 316 students, only about one third of the 934-student capacity listed in the report. 

The impact of the district’s declining enrollment is also clear in the capacity figures.  

Of the district schools operating below 50 percent capacity, every single one has experienced double digit enrollment decline over the past decade. The average enrollment decline of those schools was 28 percent – well over the district’s 12 percent average. Of the 75 schools open a decade ago that are “underutilized,” all but 13 experienced enrollment decline higher than the district average. 

Enrollment numbers for the current school year are yet to be released. But experts expect the regional decline – driven by high cost of living and declining birth rate – to continue. 

Given that context, the report is an important overview of how the district utilizes schools. But it may also be the last such report we ever get. As the district has grappled with budget deficits reaching the tens of millions, layoffs and incentivized retirements have decimated its central office staff.  

For example, San Diego Unified no longer has a full-time demographer on staff to map and project changes in populations. Keeping track of that sort of data is key to preparing for continued enrollment decline. Instead, the district now uses a part-time contracted demographer.  

Officials still create capacity reports, but now only ones for individual schools on an as-needed basis for things like whole site modernizations. 

“San Diego Unified School District evaluates school facilities’ capacity based on the academic and programmatic needs of each school community, rather than through a single, formula-based districtwide report,” wrote Marceline Sciuto, the district’s director of operations support.  

District overview versus case-by-case basis aside, district officials denied such reports even existed.  

In October, San Diego Unified officials said they did not know how many students each school could fit. They blamed that on staffing cuts, which they say meant they did not have the resources to produce such reports.  

In response to a public records request asking for capacity reports produced between 2013 and 2023, they doubled down on that claim. 

In response to a public records request seeking the documents, San Diego Unified legal specialist Jeffrey Day wrote, “I am informed that ‘District-wide capacity reports for schools do not exist. We do not have the staffing resources to produce such reports.’” 

In emails after I notified officials I’d obtained the report, Sciuto wrote that the district responded to the request in that way because, “there is no current, comprehensive districtwide capacity report maintained in the ordinary course of business.”  

“While limited-scope facility use data was collected and summarized in a worksheet in the past, that data does not constitute an ongoing comprehensive districtwide capacity report,” Sciuto continued. 

Voice wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been presented with the data. Despite asking questions about enrollment decline, capacity and school choice, San Diego Unified Superintendent Fabiola Bagula also hadn’t seen it. 

“I didn’t ask ‘Can I have this report?’ But I would say, ‘Can I have data about this? Can I have data about that?’” Bagula said. “I did not receive this.” 

But, she added, “it is my expectation executives have this information and are able to answer my questions when I when I asked them.” 

Bagula said she needed to “sit with the data more,” before she commented on what it meant for so many schools to be underenrolled. Part of what she’s interested in is choice patterns between neighborhoods and what they mean for capacity figures. To accomplish that, though, you’d likely need districtwide data, like the report no longer being produced. 

But getting that kind of information hasn’t always been easy – even for her. Bagula hasn’t been shy about her belief that the district needs to revamp its approach to data. She’s been disappointed with how unwieldy the systems are and has made creating more accessible systems a key priority, which is why she’s hired new district data specialists.  

“One of the things that was frustrating is that (the data) wasn’t at your fingertips,” Bagula said. “If I can buy anything on Amazon within three clicks, I should be able to see how a child is doing during this time.” 

Sciuto, like Bagula, wrote that there are no plans to embark on school closures or restructuring. 

Such moves are some of the most unpopular decisions any school district can make. The furious uproar over the closure of middle school grades at several San Diego Unified K-8 schools last year is a prime example of the pushback even comparatively less extreme changes can elicit. The district ultimately walked back one of four proposed closures. 

Community members in South Bay Union have also spent months protesting the imminent closure of three schools. The district has suffered some of the most profound enrollment decline of any in the county, losing about 37 percent of its students over the past decade.