Declining enrollment across the Santa Barbara Unified School District is leaving some schools with an uncertain future, and changes to school leadership.
Enrollment has been declining steadily since the 2021-22 school year, district leaders said. The downward trend is expected to continue as the district currently only has 11,446 students enrolled for next year. There are 11,708 students enrolled for the 2025-26 school year.
One school seeing the impact of declining enrollment is Santa Barbara Community Academy, an elementary school on the campus of La Cumbre Junior High School at 850 Portesuello Ave. in Santa Barbara.
On Tuesday the Santa Barbara Unified School District Board voted to have La Cumbre Junior High Principal Bradley Brock oversee both schools, instead of having two separate principals.
The board also directed staff to hire an assistant principal for Santa Barbara Community Academy.
For next year, Santa Barbara Community Academy has 171 students enrolled. In the 2021-22 school year, there were 220 students enrolled.
Sonia Wilson, the district’s assistant superintendent of educational services, said the schools will continue operating as separate sites next school year, but in the fall, once enrollment is finalized, the district will consider options for the future.
Potential options could be to continue operating both schools with one principal, combining the two schools into one school, or merge Santa Barbara Community Academy with another elementary school.
A decision won’t be made until after engagement with school families, community members, and a recommendation to the school board.
Arturo Valentin, a parent to a fourth-grader at Santa Barbara Community Academy, said the change has created a lot of confusion and fear about the school’s future.
Specifically, he’s worried about the lack of stability that could be created by not having a full time principal, especially as the school already has low test scores.
In the 2024-25 school year, only 32.58% of students met or exceeded English standards and only 25% met or exceeded math standards on state assessments, according to data from the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress.
“So our school needs more support, not less,” Valentin said in Spanish.
He explained that parents choose Santa Barbara Community Academy because they like the tight community created by the small school atmosphere and it’s convenient for families that also have children enrolled at La Cumbre Junior High.
“It is a small school, but we want to fight for it,” Valentin said.
Steve Venz, SBUSD’s chief operating officer, said the declining enrollment throughout the district means they need to keep an eye on staffing and how the district uses its facilities as well as population trends like birth rate and housing cost.
“We have an increased cost of living here, that’s why we’re doing our staff housing project over by Trader Joe’s,” Venz said. “We also know that the birth rate has been going down. I just keep going back to housing, because that’s really what it is, the cost of living.”
While some families are opting to go to private school instead, Venz said the decline in students has more to do with the cost of living.
“[Santa Barbara] is a destination city, so it’s not going to go down and then no one’s going to come back here,” Venz said. “It’s not like a tracked housing location, it’s a very specific place and a desirable place to live.”
While there’s not much the district can do to improve the birth rate or cost of living, Wilson said they can make the district more attractive to families by investing in the schools.
“We feel that when we invest in our schools, we invest in staff development, in our leadership development, that schools are going to be able to support students in richer and more meaningful ways, and that that will attract families to our schools,” Wilson said.
Noozhawk Staff Writer Pricila Flores contributed to this report.
