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.
