Demographers back in 2000 projected Manteca Unified School District would grow by 900 students over the course of the following four years.

If they all were K-8 students, that would be the equivalent of the average enrollment of a typical MUSD elementary campus.

Two years later at the halfway point of that projection the district is already two thirds of the way there adding 210 students in the 2021-2022 school year and 462 in the 2022-2023 school year.

There are now 24,616 students in the district.

Manteca Unified student housing needs today are being hit with a double whammy.

When it comes to housing students, districts up and down California now have to provide space for state-mandated traditional kindergarten (TK). The requirement is expected to increase the number of students by an additional 900 plus over the next four years by the time full implementation of TK occurs in 2025-2026.

That means without a net gain of families in the district from growth, enrollment will likely reach 25,500 by late 2026.

Add in the current growth rate thanks to Manteca and Lathrop being among the top five fastest growing cities in California and the number of new students generated during the past two school years, MUSD could be at 26,700 students by the end of 2026.

If that happens Manteca Unified enrollment will have increased by roughly 13 percent since the 2020-2021 school year when enrollment was at 23,560.

That translates into housing roughly 2,000 more students.

And while the first reaction  of many — especially in high growth neighborhoods where parents may be seeing their students bused to other campuses due to grade level overcrowding — is why isn’t the district building more elementary schools?

That, as Victoria Brunn who serves as the Manteca unified chief business and information officer pointed out, not only is it the wrong answer but it could be a costly one. That’s because it could create a situation within 20 years or so of having to close schools as has happened in other large districts where growth patterns shifted and populations of existing neighborhoods aged differently.

That is why the district is exploring all options including adding classrooms to existing campuses, building program resource centers to free up classrooms that have programs limited to 12 or students at a time or so for use to repurpose for 30 students, and even looking at smaller satellite campuses similar to the McParland Annex.

It doesn’t preclude additional elementary schools from being built. It’s just that the district wants to maximize what they have in place by augmenting campuses where possible to make sure they can afford to house new students.

At the same time the TK space, just like kindergarten classes, needs to be larger than an average classroom as well as have self-contained bathrooms.

Committing to an elementary school that can cost $30 million plus and take years to go from planning to opening.

It is why the district for a number of years has secured ongoing demography services with staff assigned to work with them. The partnership is to such a degree that they visit new home developments as a team to obtain general information on families buying homes and the ages of children in the households.

Such information allows they district not only to plan for housing but programming, staffing, and budgeting.

Enrollment growth isn’t linear nor is it consistent across all grade levels.

“This year seventh and eighth grades just blew up across the district,” Brunn said.

There has also been a surge beyond what was expected in high school enrollment.

The sales of existing homes as well as the sale of new homes aren’t all the same in terms of who are buying them in terms of young, established, or older families.

Some neighborhoods based on price point are drawing families with 7th and 8th  grade as well as high schoo1-aged children.

Those a bit lower priced in the $400,000 to $600,000 range have a larger percentage of families with young children.

At the same time apartment yields – based on rents — are different as well.
Most districts don’t have an ongoing relationship with demography firms. The reason is simple. They are in the growth mode. That means thorough examining the demographics every four years does the job.

Manteca Unified also understood a long time ago that while the overall enrollment numbers may be close to being what is projected with a four-year outlook done every four years, there is a vast difference on how the numbers accumulate at each grade level.

“In the end the overall numbers projected are almost right on,” Brunn said.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com