Schools in our exorbitantly expensive region, and county, are seeing dropping enrollments, which, in turn, is wreaking havoc on their budgets.

A report this week from our Bay Area News Group noted that regionally the enrollment drop is leading to school closures, widespread layoffs or both in an effort to plug multimillion-dollar budget holes. Total enrollment in California public schools has dropped by about 360,000 students — about 6% — in the past five years. But in the Bay Area, the declines have been much more dramatic.

Budget shortfalls were at the center of the recent heated debate in the Pajaro Valley Unified School District, where the district is looking at a spending deficit of about $5 million to $6 million over the next three years as the county’s largest school district has experienced an 18% enrollment decline over the past decade.

Countywide, enrollment is dropping, if not as dramatically as in PVUSD. Enrollment for 2023-24 was 37,841 in the county’s 14 school districts, down from 38,025 the year before, but down from 41,945 in 2019-20 — a drop of more than 4,000 students over four school years. That’s a lot.

County Superintendent of Schools Dr. Faris Sabbah has said while enrollment was affected by the pandemic, the trend also is due to demographic changes, birth rates, migration out of the state or away from the coast, and, in one of the nation’s most expensive housing markets, the cost of living.

Fewer students means districts receive less money from the state. If schools operated in some sort of bubble outside the demands of community and socio-economics, then this shrinking revenue base should also mean fewer staff and fewer facilities so schools can balance their budgets.

And perhaps some of that would have happened already — until the COVID epidemic and one-time funding poured in to pay the bills. But those funds expired at the start of this school year and now districts that were staying afloat with this one-time money face making difficult cuts. But cutting staff and closing schools is not easy, and can disproportionately affect lower-income families.

Here’s some of the cumulative enrollment data for our county over the past five years (pre-pandemic to 2023-24). Average daily enrollment figures mostly show significant declines.

In Santa Cruz County, Santa Cruz City Schools enrolled 1,768 students for 2023-24, actually up about 50 students over 2022-23. But the district faced a steep drop from 2019-20’s 2,023 students before the pandemic hit, according to Education Data Partnership, which collects enrollment data at the end of each school year.

Live Oak Schools has dropped from 1,885 to 1,747 since 2019-20.

Soquel Union Elementary also has been in steep decline, from 1,948 to 1,616 students in 2023-24.

And in PVUSD, enrollment pre-pandemic was 20,372 for 2019-20 and last year dropped to 18,098.

The one district that has remained enrollment-stable is San Lorenzo Valley Unified, where, perhaps coincidentally, housing is a bit more affordable.

If a district, runs out of money, or reserves dip too low (districts are required by law to keep a percentage of General Fund expenditures in reserve) and it won’t reduce spending, it can lose local control of its budget and operations to the county office of education — or to the state, which can appoint a trustee to run things.

All this explains why parents and teachers may start seeing some local schools closed, as well as more staffing cuts.

And why Live Oak Schools trustees, at the behest of the Santa Cruz County Office of Education, unanimously approved a budget plan in February to reduce spending by $1.9 million, including $1.2 million in staffing cuts, to help cure the district’s deficit and refill depleted reserves.

And why PVUSD trustees partially reversed course last month and agreed to eliminate the equivalent of 60.55 full-time positions as part of cutting $5 million from the budget. District Superintendent Heather Contreras, however, warned that a larger number of staff reductions will be needed next year.