The West Contra Costa Unified School District will lose more than 2,000 students over the next six years, a demographic consultant told the school board Wednesday night, with Richmond high schools bearing the steepest declines while a shortage of new housing offers little prospect of recovery.
The projections, presented by Ken Reynolds of SchoolWorks GIS, showed district enrollment falling from 24,592 students today to 22,329 by 2031, a 9.2 percent drop driven by declining birth rates, rising housing costs, and families leaving the district for charter, private, and home schools.
“The number of children being born each year in our state has been declining statewide,” Reynolds told the board. “We used to have over 600,000 births. This past year, we only had 400,000. We’ve lost a third of the births in our state over the last 12 years.”
The numbers are most troubling for high schools serving Richmond and the surrounding area. Richmond High School is projected to fall from 70 percent of capacity today to 57 percent by 2031. Kennedy High School, already the district’s smallest high school at 53 percent capacity, is projected to drop to just 41 percent. De Anza High School is projected to drop from 66 percent to 60 percent over the same period…