ANAHEIM : Study Shows Need for More Schools

The city’s birthrate is booming and more people are living under one roof, and both trends are causing the Anaheim City School District’s enrollment to skyrocket, a demographer reported last week.

A private consulting firm has told the district’s Board of Education that the current birthrate in the city is 50% higher than it was 20 years ago and that over the next 20 years 17% more people will live in only slightly more homes than exist today.

The district, which encompasses 21 elementary schools roughly between Brookhurst Street and the Santa Ana River, has seen its enrollment go from about 11,000 eight years ago to 17,030 today, completely filling its schools.

The projections were given to the city by Brenda Curtis, director of School Planning Services, the consulting firm hired by the district to analyze demographic trends and consequences for education in the city. Curtis projects that the district will have 22,000 students by 1998 and 31,000 by 2008. Enrollment will peak in 2013 at 35,000 students, her studies say.

The study was done to help bolster the district’s argument that it needs to build at least five new schools at a cost of $15 million each by 1999. It used city and county data and included a phone survey of 300 district residents.

Curtis said the study, which cost the district $30,000, shows that the district’s situation is dire.

“Even if I’m a really bad demographer and I have really bad statistics and I’m off by half, the district still needs schools,” she said.

Supt. Meliton Lopez said: “These are the best projections that we have and we think they are on target.”

According to Curtis, there were 16.4 children born for every 1,000 city residents in 1973. By 1991--the last year for which statistics are available--the city’s birthrate had climbed to 25.5 for every 1,000 residents. Curtis said that even though the school district only covers about half the city, the statistics are still valid.

The size of the district’s average household was three people in 1990 but will reach 3.4 by 2000, a 12% increase, Curtis said. The study shows that 43% of the district’s households have four or more members. Fifteen percent have six or more members.

Curtis’ study also shows that the district is undergoing a cultural transformation.

In 1980, 15% of its population was Latino. Today, that figure is 27%. The study also found that Anaheim Latino families tend to be younger and more likely to have school-age children than their counterparts. The median age of the head of a Latino household is 37, compared to 53 for non-Latinos. Latinos in the district are also four times more likely than other adults to have children of elementary-school age. In addition, Latino families are three times more likely to have lived in the district for less than three years.