SECTION 1.
The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:(a) Approximately one-half of all California school districts are experiencing declining enrollment.
(b) Declining enrollment is a widespread, statewide problem. It affects large and small school districts alike, including those districts in urban, suburban, and rural areas.
(c) School districts with declining enrollment are facing moderate to severe declines, from less than one percent to more than 56 percent, over the four fiscal years 2002–03 to 2005–06, inclusive.
(d) Enrollment decline occurs due to a variety of factors, such as
demographic changes, loss of employment by parents, changes in real estate prices, pupils transferring to charter schools, and any number of other factors that are beyond the control of school districts.
(e) Declining enrollment significantly impacts the financial health of affected schools districts as they struggle to adjust to fluctuating funding and must make necessary changes to reflect their smaller pupil populations. Seventy-five percent of school districts with qualified or negative budget certifications have declining enrollment.
(f) School districts are affected differently depending on their size and type and the extent of the decline in enrollment that they experience.
(g) School districts with declining enrollment face difficult challenges, some of which are the following:
(1) Some fixed costs, such as utilities, facilities, and maintenance, remain the same no matter how many pupils
leave the school district.
(2) Enrollment does not decline in neat 30-pupil packages, so operational costs cannot decline as quickly as revenues decline.
(3) Reductions in staff, where necessary, often involve the least senior teachers and therefore result in an increase in per pupil operational costs.
(4) Teaching staff reductions are not sufficient to compensate for the loss of revenue. Therefore, school districts must make further cuts to programs and services, which negatively impacts pupil learning.
(5) Because of the projection methodology, the cohort survival method, used for the calculation of eligibility for statewide new construction funding for school facilities, a reduction in enrollment at the kindergarten level will have a dramatic and exponential effect on overall school district eligibility for school construction funding.
(h) In order to maintain direct
instructional services, school districts must make disproportionately larger cuts in programs or scale back support services, such as counseling, maintenance, and classroom support. Research shows that these services have a profound effect on the ability of pupils to learn and their academic achievement.
(i) Currently, school districts only receive a one-year adjustment in the calculation of their funding to offset their declining enrollment. However, a one-year adjustment is inadequate, because it does not address the realities school districts face regarding how and when they can make staffing and programmatic changes.