By Jon Chown
WATSONVILLE — With enrollment in sharp decline, the Pajaro Valley Unified School District is making the first move to close schools by forming a community advisory committee to help make the difficult decisions.
The plan was unveiled at the March 18 PVUSD board meeting to create a Sustainable Schools Advisory committee to guide the district in evaluating options for consolidating or closing schools. The committee will include about 19 voting members representing parents, school employees and the wider community.
Voting members will be chosen through an application process that is designed to balance representation from different neighborhoods, school sites and backgrounds.
Seats are divided as follows:
- 8 parents or guardians
- 4 teachers
- 3 classified staff members
- 2 representatives from labor groups
- 3 community members at large
Each voting member will have one vote. District staff, outside experts and facilitators will attend meetings to provide data and guidance but will not vote.
The committee will try to reach agreement through discussion, but if members cannot agree, a simple majority vote will decide which ideas move forward.
Members will meet over several months. They will first review information on student enrollment, school capacity, and district finances. Then, they will develop different scenarios for how schools could be combined, closed, or reorganized. Each option will be compared based on equity, student access, program quality, and cost.
The committee’s final recommendations will go to the board of trustees. While the advisory group will suggest the changes, it will be up to the trustees to approve any school closures or consolidations.
Valencia Elementary School in Aptos is projected to experience steep declines in enrollment.
Report Shows Troubling Future
At the same meeting, a report was released that projected the enrollment decline to worsen and highlighted were enrollment is falling the most. The report, prepared for the district’s Sustainable Schools Advisory committee by MGT Impact Solutions of Florida, projects enrollment will fall from 15,690 students in 2025 to 12,604 by 2032 — a loss of more than 3,000 students, or nearly 20% over seven years.
The decline spans all grade levels and is not expected to reverse in the next decade. According to the report, the trend reflects a broader demographic shift rather than a temporary downturn. Lower birth rates, limited housing development, rising living costs, and an aging population are all contributing to fewer school-age children living in the district. At the same time, competition from private schools and alternative education options are drawing some families away from PVUSD schools.
“This is not a short-term fluctuation,” the report concludes. “It represents a structural change in the size and composition of the student population.”
The effects of that shift are already being felt and are expected to intensify. At the elementary level, enrollment is projected to decline by about 14%, or more than 1,000 students, over the next seven years. But the impact will not be evenly distributed. Schools in older, established neighborhoods, including areas served by Mar Vista, Valencia, and Ohlone elementary schools, are expected to see the steepest losses, driven by aging households and fewer young families moving in.
In contrast, a handful of schools tied to newer housing or stronger residential turnover, such as Ann Soldo and HA Hyde elementary schools in Watsonville, are projected to remain stable or even see modest growth. PVUSD teacher Laura Azzaro pointed this out during the meeting when she shared her reservations about the committee, commenting that she felt more teachers should be on it.
“Yes, there are schools with empty classrooms, but HA Hyde does not have one empty classroom,” she said. “I need to have reassurance that you’re going to come to our schools and actually see what we have there.”
At the middle school level, enrollment is projected to drop by approximately 860 students, or 24%, with no areas of growth identified. Schools such as Aptos Junior high, E.A. Hall, Rolling Hills, and Pajaro middle schools are expected to lose the most students, which has raised concerns about underutilized facilities.
High schools are also expected to see substantial declines, with enrollment projected to fall by about 19%, or roughly 950 students, by 2032. Watsonville High School is expected to experience the largest drop, followed by Pajaro Valley and Aptos high schools.
According to the report, about 77% of school-age children living within district boundaries attend district schools, a figure that rises to 80% at the middle school level. Once students enroll, particularly in kindergarten, they tend to remain through eighth grade. However, retention weakens slightly in high school. The rates fall to about 72% in 11th and 12th grades.
The numbers show that residents are increasingly keeping their children out of PVUSD. The key indicator is the district’s percentage of local children who enroll in kindergarten at district schools, which has fallen from around 77% in recent years to nearly 70%. At the same time, this is happening, the district has attracted 465 students from outside its boundaries to PVUSD schools.
Trustee Jessica Carrasco said if district focused more on what it is doing well, it could attract and retain more students. “Positive things are happening in our district, but we choose to focus on other things,” she said, noting the recent achievements made in athletics and the arts. “We do have a lot of good things. We just have to enrich them and support them.”
Committee’s Recommendations Will Be Key
The Sustainable Schools Advisory committee will review all this data and more to develop its recommendations, which are due by November 2026. Besides school closures, they will review potential changes to school boundaries, grade configurations, and district policies needed to implement any approved plan.
“The focus,” the report states, “must remain on ensuring that every student continues to have access to high-quality educational opportunities, even as the system adjusts to a smaller scale.”
PVUSD Superintendent Heather Contreras said anyone in the community is welcome to apply, and their application would be taken as seriously as any other member of the community. The district, she said, wanted the community to make this decision.
“We’ll go through the application process. If we have more than one person apply to different positions we will do a random televised drawing so that everyone can be sure there is transparency,” she said. “We’re not trying to pack the committee. We just want to have fair and equal representation.”
The meetings will be televised and recorded.
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TOP PHOTO: Ann Soldo Elementary School in Watsonville is nearly the only school in the district not expected to experience declining enrollment over the next 10 years.