Nearly all Santa Maria Joint Union High School District students who apply to California State University (CSU) campuses are accepted, but fewer than one-third enroll, according to Allan Hancock College President Kevin G. Walthers.

Walthers delivered the keynote speech on Tuesday at the Santa Maria Valley Chamber of Commerce’s State of Education at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, where 100 education leaders and community stakeholders came together to discuss how local schools are preparing students for the future.

Tuesday’s gathering also included a panel with superintendents from four North County districts: Santa Maria Joint Union, Santa Maria-Bonita, Orcutt Union and Guadalupe Union.

Walthers — who has been Hancock’s president since 2013 — credited local schools for getting students “A-G ready,” but said acceptance does not always translate into enrollment.

“We know that cost is a factor in higher education, leaving home when you have sibling care, when you have to work to help pay the bills for your family that can’t afford the house they’re living in… it just doesn’t happen,” he said.

Walthers pointed to enrollment figures comparing students who go straight from Santa Maria Joint Union to CSUs with those who start at Hancock.

He said about 30% of accepted Santa Maria Joint Union students enroll at CSU campuses overall, compared with 59% of accepted Hancock students.

He cited similar gaps at Cal Poly (17% vs. 47%), UC Santa Barbara (8% vs. 22%), and UC campuses overall (25% vs. 43%).

“I think the data are pretty clear, if you come to Hancock your chances of getting into a highly selective four-year university are substantially improved, and it’s not just because you’re saving more money,” Walthers said.

He attributed part of that difference to students building momentum before transferring.

“Our faculty are teaching these students how to be college students, teaching them how to be university students, and you’re getting really high-quality, high-touch instruction,” he said.

Among local graduates who begin at Hancock, roughly half of those who complete 24 units transfer to a four-year institution, Walthers said. The figure rises to 64% for students who complete 48 units.

County Superintendent of Schools Susan Salcido said the four North County districts represented on the panel serve 32,572 of Santa Barbara County’s roughly 67,000 TK-12 public school students.

Salcido said districts are balancing competing priorities, from academic achievement and student mental health to rapidly changing technology, screen time, and college and career readiness.

Two of those priorities, she said, are being addressed through new state requirements: Phone-Free School Act (AB 3216), which requires districts to adopt campus smartphone policies by July 1, 2026, and AB 2927, which requires high schools to begin offering a one-semester personal finance course in the 2027-28 school year.

She also discussed the “tough decisions” around school finance.

“Schools all over California are right now in the midst of dwindling down one-time funds that were really significant,” she said.

Growth and Mental Health Needs in Guadalupe

Salcido said Guadalupe saw the biggest population increase in Santa Barbara County, growing 10.2% from 2020 to 2025.

She said the growth has forced the Guadalupe Union School District to expand quickly. With a new junior high school and an early learning center for transitional kindergarten students, the district now has four schools.

Guadalupe Union Superintendent Emilio Handall said the district was already at capacity when he arrived eight years ago.

“The fact that we built two more schools only accommodates what we currently have,” he said.

Handall said the district was not fully prepared for the challenges students and families faced during the COVID-19 era.

“We recognized that we had some mental health challenges before we went into the pandemic lockdown, but afterwards it was just an explosion of mental health challenges,” he said.

He said partnerships with groups such as United Way, the Boys and Girls Club, the YMCA and the Dunes Center have become essential as the district works to provide services it cannot deliver on its own.

Handall also said the district would like more state funding, “but that’s simply not the case.”

He said they’ve been able to “create rock soup, if you will, by working with our partners to create this great menu of services to provide our students.”

AI, Technology and Cell Phone Policies

Asked how Orcutt Union is responding to emerging technology, Superintendent Holly Edds said the district is focused first on the outcomes it wants for students, then on how to use new tools to help get them there.

“The reality is the jobs of today, many of the jobs didn’t even exist 10 years ago,” Edds said. “So we need to teach our students how to be learners, how to continue to grow, how to have those learner and growth mindsets, how to be okay with struggle and be okay to fail.”

Edds said students also need to learn how to evaluate information generated by AI.

“Is it ethical? Is it accurate? Is it important?” she said, adding that “human skills” like empathy and judgment will remain essential as technology evolves.

Edds said the district recently held an AI summit where students and teachers learned alongside each other.

She also addressed screen time, explaining that Orcutt Union adopted an “off and away” policy this year.

Under the policy, Edds said student cell phones aren’t allowed to be out during the school day. The district has also encouraged limits on screen time at home, including device curfews aimed at helping students sleep and build healthy routines.

Community Schools and Curriculum Alignment

Santa Maria-Bonita Superintendent Darren McDuffie said the district secured a $30 million grant over five years to transition all 21 schools into a community schools model.

He said they want to remove barriers to learning through wraparound supports, expanding after-school opportunities and strengthening family engagement.

“You know school is not just 8 to 3 anymore,” he said. “And really it is about providing those opportunities and engaging our students in access to opportunities that they may not have had in the past.”

Technical Education, Dual Enrollment and Workforce Readiness

Salcido said Santa Maria Joint Union High School District has three comprehensive schools and Delta High School, a continuation campus.

She said about 12,000 high school students in Santa Barbara County are currently taking a Career Technical Education (CTE) course, which focuses on career training and job skills.

Santa Maria Joint Union Superintendent Antonio Garcia said college and career readiness “begins when students are young” and depends on alignment with local partners, including Allan Hancock College.

Student participation has doubled over the last five years in CTE pathways and dual enrollment through Hancock. The district offers 40 different CTE pathways across its high schools in 15 industries, he said.

Garcia said the number of students who are college eligible has also doubled.

“We have this kind of trifecta of career technical education completers, college eligible students and we have dual enrollment all working together to better prepare our students for college and also for workforce entry,” he said.

A Promise Kept

Walthers reminded the audience about the Hancock Promise, which aims to help close the gap between CSU acceptance and enrollment.

Launched in 2018, what began as free tuition and fees for the first year now covers two years for eligible local graduates who enroll at Hancock immediately after high school.

Walthers said the community has raised more than $10 million for an endowment supporting the program.

“We have $10 million set aside for a promise program and it will be there forever,” he said. “It’s truly a promise.”

Walthers described the Promise as a pipeline that starts before high school. Bulldog Bound, the first step, focuses on building a college-going culture among fifth- through eighth-grade students and their families through early outreach events that introduce them to the campus.

“Bring those students to campus, let them see what it’s like to go to college,” he said. “Show them that college is for them.”

Dual enrollment is another part of that pipeline, allowing students to earn college credit while still in high school. Walthers highlighted a partnership with the city of Guadalupe that brought Hancock classes to the community, allowing high school students to earn college credit closer to home.

“Three of the last six years, we’ve had more Latino graduates than we had total graduates in that first year,” he said. “That’s how you change the odds for a community that looks like ours.”