Emeryville Families Continue to Say NO to Emery Unified School District

47% of Student Body Are Transfers From Other Districts 

Persistent Despite Overall Enrollment Increase

Student enrollment is up this year for Emery Unified School District but inter-district transfers remain stubbornly high, unchanged at 47% despite a multi-year effort to deliver more Emeryville children to Emeryville's schools, the district announced recently.  The mixed results revealed in a power point presentation at a recent School Board meeting show how intractable the problem has been for Emery to attract students living in the district.

District-wide, Emery has 389 Emeryville children enrolled for 2018/19 or 53% of a student body of 732.  That's effectively no change over last year's count of 364, 53% of a student body of 690.  The middle school's decrease in percentage of Emeryville children (drop from 55% to 52%) was offset by good results from Anna Yates Elementary School where 57% of children enrollees reside in Emeryville this year over 55% last year.
Most inter-district transfer students to Emery come from Oakland Unified School District.

The uptick in total student enrollment over last year represents the first substantive increase in more than ten years for the struggling district.  At 732 students Emery has more pupils now than it has had since 2013 and is operating at near full capacity.

Emery's poor record of attracting local children has been attributed to a combination of low test scores and high housing costs among other reasons.
Emeryville's housing stock has also skewed against families as the town continues its apartment building boom.  What few families that do locate in Emeryville have shown a propensity towards either sending their children to private school, chasing higher test scores or transferring them out to higher achieving districts.  The District has for years set a goal to attract more Emeryville children but City Hall hasn't cooperated.  Emeryville's population has more than doubled since 1993 to over 12,000 now but almost no affordable housing for families has been built during that time.

Notably and inexplicably, the School Board majority rejected Emeryville's recently passed Measure C affordable housing bond which prioritizes affordable housing for families.  The Board voted 3-2 to say NO to endorsing Measure C, with then Board President Cruz Vargas leading the charge against it.  Emeryville voters passed the measure by almost 73%, leaving the Emery School Board among the 27% who said NO to affordable family housing.

ECCL Ineffective in Raising Student Enrollment: Drop Continues

Emery Student Enrollment Continues Slide

New ECCL Campus Has No Effect

Promised Increase a Chimera 

Despite building the ambitious Emeryville Center of Community Life campus two years ago, a bond funded whole new campus that school district officials had widely touted as a fail safe remedy for perennially sagging student enrollment figures, newly released enrollment data at Emery Unified School District reveals that the district is having ongoing troubles attracting children.  Year two into the ECCL era, the gleaming new school campus has shown little to no effect on raising the perniciously dropping student enrollment.  

In fact, the numbers show it's gotten worse; the district is in a multi-year general downward trend that's culminated in 698 students enrolled in 2015/16, the year before taxpayers built the new $75 million campus, dropping to 687 for the first year at ECCL followed by slight uptick this year at 692, but still lower than before the ECCL. 

Emery has been plagued with poor leadership; a series of failing superintendents cycling through every three or so years, resulting in plunging test scores and a dropped ranking, landing the beleaguered little district at the bottom among East Bay school districts as the Tattler reported October 8th.  Also discouraging for district officials is the consistently low numbers of Emeryville residents with children who attend Emery schools.  Last year 46% of children at Emery resided in Emeryville, a number that has remained stuck below 50% for years.

The School Board plans a big turn around for Emery in the form of a new set of guidelines for the District that includes bumping up enrollment including the ratio of Emeryville residents attending Emery, dramatically increasing teacher retention and a big increase in test scores.  Board member Cruz Vargas drafted the new guidelines that he forwarded to the Board at a recent meeting but he didn't say how the new goals would be met.  The Board has not yet voted on the new guidelines.

School districts receive money based on the number of students enrolled and the continuing drop for Emery has had a deleterious effect on the budget, resulting in cut backs over the years.
 Superintendent John Rubio didn't return calls regarding Emery's newly released dropping enrollment numbers.

CORRECTION 10/24 8:35 am: The School Board did not vote on the new guidelines as reported.  The story has since been updated.

Total Enrollment Emery Unified School District

Emery Secondary School (high school) Total number of Enrolled Students

There were 20 more K students in 2015-16, which is what accounted 

for the enrollment increase. It off set the high school drop. 

From 15-16 to 16-17, the drop was in K with increase of plus 2 in 6th,  

plus 5 in 7th, plus 3 in 9th and 10th.  Also noteworthy is the drop from 

10th grade in 2014-15 to 12th grade in 16-17 and the actual graduation 

number which could be as low as 30.  

Following the cohort from K in 2014-15. The group started with 63 kids, 

most of them likely Emeryville residents, 

now there are 43 students in that cohort.