The Disappearing Demographic

What happened to our kids?

To hear Claremont Councilmembers Ellen Taylor, Sam Pedroza, Linda Elderkin and Peter Yao tell it, we have a youth population boom, one that we have to spend heavily on.

But an odd and overlooked thing occurred during the recent city council campaign. The Claremont Unified School District (CUSD) acknowledged that something on the order of 13.9% of the enrollment in CUSD schools comes from outside of the city. The school district props up its numbers by using inter-district transfers. In the 2005-2006 school year, 953 out of 6,868 CUSD students came from outside of Claremont.

(A special thanks to our readers for forwarding this information.)

And CSUD actually counts some Pomona residents in their Claremont numbers. There really isn't a Claremont kid population boom. That is one reason why the new elementary school that was supposed to go next to La Puerta Park has never been built. Remember that 2000 Measure Y bond money ($48.9 million worth)? All gone and no La Puerta school.

According to then-superintendent Douglas Keeler's 2000 open letter to the community, La Puerta Elementary was one of the eight priorities identified by a task force headed by Claremont 400 and Preserve Claremonter (a $500 donor) Jeanne Hamilton. Jeanne is on the current school board, which is entirely a Claremont 400 entity. Keeler's letter estimated $4.5 million of the bond money would be used for building La Puerta school.

We here at CI supported Measure Y. So we ask: What happened to that $48.9 million? One thing that occurred was that of the over $80,000 raised by proponents of Measure Y in 2000, the majority came from contractors who do work for school districts. Something almost guaranteed to lead to misappropriations. CUSD ended up spending all of that Measure Y money without completing all of the projects it promised to. A small oversight, but it just goes to show the 400 can mismanage the schools as much as they can the city government.

If you have any questions regarding your Measure Y money, write to the CSUD Board of Education or to current superintendent David Cash. Their contact information is here.

So, why does CUSD need its enrollment propped up anyway?

Because the number of kids relative to the population is declining. The U.S. Census Bureau shows that Claremont's population only increased by 2.9% between 1990 and 2000. At the same time, California's population increased 13.9%.

But Claremont's kid population increased right? Well, sort of. The U.S. Census figures show that in 1990, there were 7,025 kids under 18 years old. By 2000, that number had increased by six to 7,031. The number of kids under five years old actually declined by 81.

In 10 years, Claremont's total kid population increased a whopping .00085%. Huge.

In contrast, the same Census tables show between 1990 and 2000 Claremont's over 65 population increased from 4,026 to 4,966, an increase of 23.3%. And household size has declined from 2.68 people per household in 1990 to 2.56 in 2000. Households have gotten older and smaller.

What's going on? It's all tied to affordable housing. Look at your home values. They've skyrocketed in the past 17 years. As a result, families with young kids can't afford to buy a house in Claremont. Most of the new housing built in the past 10 years or so hasn't been of the starter home variety. It's been pricey, larger homes purchased by older people with older or grown kids. And older houses, even in South Claremont, have become unaffordable to many young families.

So, we should think twice when the Claremont 400 and Ellen Taylor, Linda Elderkin, Sam Pedroza, Jeanne Hamilton or Steve Llanusa tell us that we need to spend more on our kids. We need to look realistically at the population trends and allocate our resources accordingly. Instead, we've acted emotionally, foolishly, and projected trends from other parts of California onto an aging, graying Claremont.

Foolish indeed, maybe even stupid.