By catering to real estate developers and gentrifiers, school boards and city councils consolidate their resources into wealthy neighborhoods and displace underprivileged students and families, destroying public education and killing the American dream.
From campus violence to budget cuts and even far-right politics working their way into district policies, it is clear California public education is in a state of turmoil.
While all these issues are deeply concerning, the most pertinent threat to California schools is declining enrollment.
Public schools receive funding based on a multitude of factors ranging from school performance, attendance and yes, student enrollment. When enrollment declines and funding dissipates, school districts are forced to make tough, often unfair decisions by cutting programs, laying off staff or worse permanently closing schools.
Student displacement when schools do close disproportionately impacts historically Black, Brown and working-class communities.
Declining enrollment has already begun to ravage our local community.
More specifically, declining enrollment was directly cited as the primary cause for the multiple school closures in Baldwin Park, Hacienda La Puente and Inglewood Unified School Districts.
The declining enrollment issue isn’t happening in a vacuum.
According to the Public Policy Institute of California, the California Department of Finance expects to see a total loss of over 1 million students state-wide by 2032.
More often than not, declining enrollment is attributed to nation-wide declining birth rates which the US Census Bureau says have fallen every year since 2008, with the exception of 2014.
But what is driving this major decline in birth rates?
With so little research available, so-called “experts” on the subject have thrown multiple theories at the wall hoping something will stick like women gaining a more prominent role in the workforce, post-pandemic anxieties and shifting religious and familial values within the younger generations.
I say bullshit.
The reason that people, mainly younger millennials and Gen Z, aren’t having as many kids is actually quite simple.
We can’t fucking afford it.
Specifically, we can’t afford a place to raise a family. Many of us are starting to believe we never will.
In California, the gentrification of working-class neighborhoods, the oppressive nature of Homeowners Associations and the treatment of housing purely as a means of investment rather than ensuring people have a place to live have all but destroyed the American Dream for younger generations.
According to Zillow, the median home price in California has inflated to over $800,000. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in LA county is well over $2,500 monthly. And that is a generous underestimate.
Anyone who paid attention in their high school economics class knows that it is financially irresponsible to spend more than one third of what you earn on housing, and for the vast majority of young Americans sticking to that time-tested budgetary rule is all but impossible.
- Median Home Value in Baldwin Park: $683,084
- Median Home Value in Hacienda Heights: $928,317
- Median Home Value in La Puente: $680,081
- Median Home Value in Inglewood: $757,106
I’m sure you have noticed that three of the four neighborhoods listed are actually below the median housing price statewide. But it is important to know that only about 46% of Californian’s own the home they live in.
Regardless, these prices are completely absurd.
Tying this back into declining enrollment, you’d think the answer to this would be pretty simple: ensure housing is affordable so people can start families and in turn, more children will enroll in local public schools.
But when it comes down to choosing between keeping property values high or ensuring that housing and education are accessible to future generations, personal wealth accrual seems to take priority over public wellbeing particularly with homeowners that actively engage with local government.
For whatever reason, be it ignorance, apathy or good old-fashioned American greed, school boards, city councils and even state and federal legislators are more than happy to pretend there isn’t a clear correlation between the rise of home prices and wealth inequality with lower birth rates, declining enrollment, the educational funding cuts and the permanent closure of public schools.
Whether you try to address enrollment issues or homelessness, nobody is willing to take a hit to their property values. These are issues everyone seems to want addressed. Just not if it means measures are taken in their own neighborhoods or will affect their bottom line.
In many neighborhoods, the push for affordable housing has faced active resistance, like the reaction seen in the Hacienda Heights community to Project Room Key, a program that would convert older local motels into affordable housing units. When the NIMBYs come out to play, they come out in force.
According to the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, some school districts have even helped to exacerbate the issue like when HLPUSD decided to sell off a number of district properties, La Subida and Glenelder elementary schools off to luxury condominium developer Lennar.
This decision drew heavy criticism from the local community and a coalition formed to stop the high-cost real estate development from moving forward.
A little over a year later, the lot remains an empty, abandoned and undeveloped eyesore. It would have made a lot more sense to turn the land into a park, community center or god forbid, new subsidized single-family housing units that could have been price regulated so they didn’t cost a couple bucks shy of $1 million for a new family to move in.
But no, the decision was made to sell once public land to a private luxury condo developer with a shady history.
Again, this was done with the intention of keeping property values high and attracting new, wealthy families to the neighborhood which they said will help the district and community in the long run. But what does that mean for working class or low-income families that were already here? The people who have generational ties to the land, schools and community.
Well frankly, it seems like they are a bit of an afterthought.
I am not at all implying that any particular member of any state or local government is working actively against their communities with true malicious intent. I am fully aware the issues of gentrification, displacement and the over incentivization of profit in the real estate market are often outside the scope of local, and sometimes even state government.
But what the hell did we think was going to happen here?
Like I said before, these things aren’t happening in a vacuum nor are they exclusive to California. This is a nationwide crisis affecting both public education and the general well being of the American people.
According to Chalkbeat, similar trends were observed in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Denver Colorado and, just like we’ve seen throughout LA county, they had a disproportionate impact on Black, Brown and working-class communities.
The neoliberal approach of consolidating resources into more well-off schools and simply allowing displaced students from underserved communities to attend alongside their more privileged counterparts, in absence of advocating for change to the broken system that led us here, is simply slapping a band-aid on an arterial bleed.
It’s just not going to cut it.
There is no secret here. Unless we set greed and want aside and start paying attention to the cries of our hurting communities, enrollment will continue to decline and public schools will continue to die.
