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The number of students in Mountain View’s public schools increased slightly this school year, even as the state and county continue to see post-COVID enrollment declines.
The Mountain View Whisman School District and the Mountain View Los Altos High School District each saw a 1.2% increase in student enrollment this fall, compared to the 2023-24 school year. In comparison, California saw a 0.54% decrease in student enrollment and Santa Clara County schools overall saw a 1.1% drop.
Schools across the state saw their student bodies shrink in size when the COVID-19 pandemic upended education five years ago. At the state and county level, those decreases have slowed, but continued to be seen.
Locally, Mountain View Whisman shrunk substantially during the pandemic, while MVLA stayed more stable. Both districts are now seeing enrollment numbers stay more steady.
“I think it’s a positive trend for the school district to maintain stable numbers at a time when the state as a whole is declining,” Mountain View Whisman Superintendent Jeff Baier told the Voice.
Unlike many districts throughout the state, both of Mountain View’s main public school districts are largely funded through local property tax revenue, rather than on a per-pupil basis. That means that changes in student population have a much smaller impact on school funding than many other districts experience.
However, fluctuations in size can impact the districts’ staffing levels, as well as program and course offerings.
Read on for a deeper dive into each school district’s enrollment numbers.
Mountain View Whisman School District
Overall enrollment in the Mountain View Whisman School District ticked up slightly this school year, increasing 1.2% from 4,591 to 4,644 students.
However, Baier noted that the numbers were buoyed somewhat by the expansion of transitional kindergarten – and that otherwise the district’s enrollment would be essentially flat.
Over the past several years, schools throughout California have been in the process of expanding their transitional kindergarten offerings to comply with state legislation, offering the program to a wider age range of students each fall. The state requirement will take full effect in the 2025-26 school year, with all 4-year-olds eligible. Transitional kindergarten is an optional program parents can enroll their children in for the year before kindergarten.
The phased expansion has meant that more kids are eligible each year, boosting districts’ enrollment numbers. This school year, Mountain View Whisman has 211 transitional kindergarten students, compared to 166 last school year, according to state data.
When you exclude the transitional kindergarten students, the district’s enrollment increased just eight students this school year, from 4,425 to 4,433.
Nonetheless, at a time when enrollment continues to drop statewide, staying stable is a good place for Mountain View Whisman to be, Baier said. The consistent numbers mean the district doesn’t have to adjust course and program offerings as frequently.
“It is always a positive for maintaining a consistent program if we have a stable student population,” Baier said.
At the same time, the district’s enrollment remains substantially lower than its pre-pandemic levels. In the 2019-20 school year, Mountain View Whisman had 5,082 students, which is 8.6% higher than today, equating to a decrease of 438 students.
When looking on a school-by-school level, enrollment trends differ among the district’s campuses.
Compared to pre-COVID numbers, Bubb, Imai and Castro elementary schools are all substantially smaller, dropping by 33.9%, 28.8% and 24.2% since the 2019-20 school year, respectively.
In contrast, Vargas Elementary School’s student body is up 25.6% since COVID. Vargas is the district’s newest school, with 2019-20 being the first year the campus was in operation.
The only other elementary school to experience growth, compared to before the pandemic, is Stevenson, which has grown 7.2%. Stevenson is a choice school with an enrollment lottery that prospective students have to enter for a chance to attend. It has grown to be the district’s largest elementary school, with 461 students this year.
At the middle school level, Crittenden’s student population dropped when COVID hit, but has since partially rebounded and is now 4.8% below its 2019-20 size. Over the past two years, Crittenden has seen an increase of nearly 80 students.
Graham has stayed more stable over time, declining about 2.4% over the past two years, but maintaining roughly the same population today that it did in the 2019-20 school year.
When it comes to Mountain View Whisman’s overall demographics, 38.7% of the district’s students are Latino, 22.7% are Asian, another 22.7% are white, and 12.4% identify as being from two or more racial groups.
The number of white students in Mountain View Whisman dropped substantially during the pandemic, but has since leveled off over the past few school years. In total, the number of white students is roughly 30% lower than it was in the 2019-20 school year. That’s substantially more than the 8.6% drop in the district’s total population.
The number of Latino students, on the other hand, had already been declining before the pandemic, but began to stabilize in the 2021-22 school year and has since been increasing. There are now roughly 1.1% more Latino students than before COVID hit.
In contrast, the Asian student population had been steadily increasing in the years before the pandemic, and while that growth stalled for a couple of years, the numbers have once again started to tick up. There has been a 14.1% increase in the number of Asian students compared to the 2019-20 school year.
Currently, 30.6% of the district’s students are considered socioeconomically disadvantaged. That number was declining for many years, but has increased somewhat over the past several. This school year, there are 1,420 socioeconomically disadvantaged students, up 3% from last year.
The number of students with disabilities has increased for the past few school years and currently sits at 557, which is 6.3% higher than it was in the 2019-20 school year.
When it comes to students who are learning English, there are now 1,087 English learners in Mountain View Whisman. The number of English learners had been declining consistently until the 2021-22 school, when it began to increase. This school year saw a 2.8% dip compared to last year, but the number of English learners is still up overall from a trough of 900 students in 2020-21.
Mountain View Los Altos High School District
Similar to Mountain View Whisman, the Mountain View Los Altos High School District’s enrollment stayed relatively steady this school year. The high school district now has 4,459 students, up 1.2% from 4,406 students in the 2023-24 school year.
While both districts are currently holding roughly stable, their experiences during the pandemic diverged substantially. While Mountain View Whisman saw a notable drop-off in students, MVLA’s enrollment was more stable.
The high school district saw slight declines in the size of its student body for a few years, but is currently only 2% smaller than it was in 2019-20, compared to an 8.6% drop-off for Mountain View Whisman.
Although MVLA hasn’t seen substantial declines, its steadiness stands in contrast to the consistent growth that the district saw before COVID hit. From the 2014-15 school year to 2019-20, MVLA increased by 17.2%. Since the pandemic, those gains have largely flatlined.
Superintendent Eric Volta noted that the district’s long term enrollment trends will depend in large part on how much additional housing gets built, particularly in the Shoreline area. The city of Mountain View has been planning for Google to build thousands of homes in North Bayshore, but economic challenges in the tech sector have made that development more uncertain.
The district’s two main high schools are currently nearly the same size. Mountain View High has 2,187 students this school year, compared to 2,170 at Los Altos High.
Overall, 31.3% of MVLA’s students are white, 28% are Asian, 25.5% are Latino and 11.3% identify as being from two or more racial groups.
The number of white students attending MVLA schools has declined significantly since the onset of the pandemic. There are currently 17.5% fewer white students in the district than there were in the 2019-20 school year.
In contrast, the number of Asian students in the district was already increasing before COVID hit and the number has continued to grow. This school year, there are 1,249 Asian students, which is 18.3% higher than it was in 2019-20.
Latino students have stayed relatively more stable, with slight declines in several recent years. In total, the population of Latino students in MVLA sits at 1,139, which is 3.1% lower than it was in 2019-20.
MVLA has seen an increase in the number of its students who are learning English in recent years. Currently, there are 338 students classified as English learners in MVLA, which is up 35.2% from 250 students in the 2019-20 school year.
The number of MVLA students who are considered socioeconomically disadvantaged hasn’t shown a consistent trend over the past several years. Currently, 747 MVLA students are socioeconomically disadvantaged, making up 16.8% of the district’s overall student body.
The share of students with disabilities has been relatively steady for the past few years, but sits 6.6% higher than the 2019-20 figures. There are currently 486 students in MVLA identified as having disabilities.
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It’s worth noting that 25% of the elementary school students in Mountain VIew attend Los Altos School DIstrict schools. With all the new construction in the city, enrollment should have gone up. Staying about even is actually a decline. Mountain View is above most of the county in terms of housing having been added. This is what has allowed enrollment to stay even. There had been projections of a potential 20% increase due to all the new housing. For example, MVWSD wanted to add a new elementary school in the North Bayshore area. MVWSD continues to keep 2 old school sites idle, Landels and Whisman. It has been renting both of these out but Google has ended plans for continued use of Landels.
Polite correction to ‘Long Resident’: the ‘2 old school sites’ are SLATER and Whisman.