ENCINITAS — Due to an increased student population at San Dieguito Academy, the San Dieguito Union High School District decided to implement an enrollment lottery for the 2022-23 school year.
The district instituted a cap of 428 students for incoming freshmen and following the lottery, there was a total of 63 incoming freshmen who were put onto a waitlist. Including new students at other grade levels, there were 135 students in total placed on a waitlist following the lottery, according to the district.
However, in a change of course, the district voted Monday night to lift all caps to allow for any student in the district who wishes to attend SDA to go to school there next year.
The enrollment at SDA was expected to be 2,113 students with the caps in place — four more students than the current enrollment level. The number is now expected to be higher for the next school year, including waitlisted students.
“If every single one of those students enrolled and showed up on the very first day of school we would be at 2,246 which is 137 more than where we currently sit today,” Deputy Superintendent Mark Miller said. “So just to put it into perspective when you look at 137 students that’s about five extra teachers that we would be hiring for SDA.”
However, the district normally sees an 8% attrition rate, or rate of students who initially enroll at SDA and decide to attend a different high school. Using that figure, the district says it would expect to see around 62 extra students at San Dieguito Academy.
The only vote against the change, with Trustee Julie Bronstein absent from the Monday night special meeting, was Trustee Katrina Young who expressed concern over the overcrowding of the school.
“I do fear that we will soon be at a tipping point. I’ve been told that the entire campus, especially the internal hallways, becomes what is often described as a superhighway during passing periods,” Young said.
Trustee Michael Allman said the district needs to do a better job of pushing some students who are on the margins between attending SDA and La Costa Canyon to attend the latter.
Superintendent Cheryl James-War pointed to some of the programs that are available at LCC but not available at San Dieguito.
“One of the things we can do is build that band program because that’s very unique, it only happens at LCC. We also have rugby at LCC, I don’t believe we have rugby at SDA. Rugby is an up-and-coming sport,” James-Ward said.
The board also discussed the possibility of creating a task force that would examine ways to increase enrollment at La Costa Canyon. However there was not a majority in support with Trustees Katrina Young and Melisse Mossy instead hoping for a task force that would examine that for all of the schools in the district.
“I’d like to bring that back to gather data for all our locations and I think it would benefit LCC but I think it would benefit all of our students so I’m going to say no with the hopes that we’re going to bring this back,” Mossy said.
