A Slow, Steady Decline

James Logan High School has been experiencing declining enrollment for the past decade; the student body had  4,127 students in the 2011-2012 school year and now has 3,650 students. This phenomenon is enmeshed within various causes and has brought about mixed effects.

“For students, I think having smaller classes is a good thing,” says Mrs. Adriana Saavedra, a Spanish teacher who taught at Logan for 18 years. “If you have less students, you can pay more attention to the students. You can do more. If you got larger classes, you’re [only] doing the basics, but that’s not what they’re interested in.”  

On the other hand, Mrs. KimVan Vuong, a math teacher of nine years at Logan, does not observe a significant difference due to declining enrollment.

“I will say the performance in my calculus courses are not as strong, but I don’t know if it’s directly correlated to how many students are in our student body,” Vuong said. However, Vuong also points out a potentially positive outlook overall for school-wide performance.

“I think a lot of the students who would have been struggling at Logan choose to go over to Conley,” Vuong said. [One] reason enrollment at Logan has been declining is because enrollment at Conley and our independent adult school [and] all the other schools that we offer for high school kids, is increasing. Now we have part of the population that would have been part of the lower performing students there… which, in my mind, should bring up the performance [at Logan].”

Aside from what Vuong points out, declining enrollment at Logan may also have roots in the situation state-wide.

“I believe that the cost of living is getting high, starting with homes. California is an expensive state, and part of it is migration. Some people decide to migrate. The other part is some people decide to have less kids,” explains Saavedra. 

“I feel like, after the year 2000, people [thought] having one kid or two kids is enough,” adds Vuong. “I remember my graduating class that was born in the year 2000, that class was huge. Those were the 2018 [class], and then after that, every senior group has gotten smaller and smaller.” 

Although some benefits may be wrought from the situation, declining enrollment still poses many concerns from various perspectives. In terms of counseling services, Vuong says that “Admin and counselors are hired based on how [much] enrollment we have. My initial thought was they’re probably having an easier time, but now they’ll [probably] just get rid of one principal.”

This concern is not held solely by the teachers either. Mesha Mittanasala, a junior at Logan, raises another concern.

“I’m kind of concerned that Logan’s gonna be another Mission [San Jose]. Because housing prices are absurd, there’s way more rich kids coming in, which means there’s gonna be a bigger disparity amongst the higher-income kids and lower-income kids,” Mittansala said. “I feel like high-income kids who have more resources get to go to really good colleges, while low-income kids don’t. … I feel like with that increase [in] economic inequality, Logan really has to make sure that they fill their gap.”

Finally, the effects may come back around for teachers and students alike.

“With declining enrollment, there’s not that many kids that will need to take electives, so … there’s fewer elective teachers being hired,” Vuong said. One of the nice things about Logan being a big student body is that we always had such a diverse array of classes to offer. There was something for everybody. And now, because we don’t have those numbers to hire as many of those teachers, we can’t offer as much as we used to.”