Education reporter Jakob McWhinney recently brought San Diego Unified officials a seemingly straightforward question: how many students can each district-run school serve?
The question was part of a thread he’s been following for months. Thanks to falling birth rates and the region’s high cost of living chasing families away, San Diego Unified’s enrollment has decreased by nearly 14,000 students over just the past decade. That’s an about 13 percent overall decline. State officials project that the decline will worsen in coming years.
But what has that meant for the district’s schools? Officials at districts like South Bay Union, which was hit by massive enrollment declines in recent years, have had to take the heartbreaking step of closing some schools.
How many San Diego Unified schools now enroll far fewer students than they can fit? To answer that question, you first need to know the capacity of each district school.
San Diego Unified officials said they don’t know and that calculating that number is complex and “would exceed existing staff and resource capacity.”
Bar Manager’s Complaint Sparks Brief Ethics Probe
San Diego County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer delivers the State of the County speech at the National History Museum in Balboa Park on April 16, 2025. / Photo by Vito di Stefano for Voice of San Diego
The county ethics office swiftly opened and closed an investigation into Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer in January.
The county launched the probe into the chair of the county Board of Supervisors after allegations that she flashed her county badge outside a North Park bar to get in and ultimately left the ID behind.
The county ultimately concluded the allegations “lacked merit” and decided against further action, our Lisa Halverstadt reveals.
Yet records also show county investigators concluded after a day-long probe that there was a “preponderance of evidence” that Lawson-Remer used her county badge to get into the bar and then left it behind, though she later properly reported it was lost.
What county officials awkwardly didn’t do: notify Lawson-Remer, who claims she was home in Encinitas eating dim sum the night she allegedly showed her county ID at Part Time Lover. Lawson-Remer’s office said she learned of the allegations and the investigation last week as county officials prepared to respond to a Voice of San Diego Public Records Act request.
Could Construction Defect Litigation Be Slowing Down Housing Production?
A sharp decline in condo and townhome construction in California over the years has many housing experts blaming the state’s construction defect litigation system.
Stephen Russell, president and CEO of the San Diego Housing Federation, said at Voice of San Diego’s recent Politifest: Solutions Showdown that the system needs reform.
What it means: The law allows homeowners and homeowner associations (HOAs) to sue builders for construction flaws for up to 10 years after the project is completed.
Russell argued that the risk and cost tied to these lawsuits discourage developers from building more “naturally occurring affordable housing” like condos and townhomes for sale.
More from Politifest: La Jolla Country Day student Sedona Lineback contributed a story about the solutions panelists presented during our Politifest discussion on how leaders can solve street homelessness. Read her summary here.
In Other News
- San Diego County uses taxpayer dollars to lease County Supervisor Joel Anderson’s district office in El Cajon, which is owned by a prominent East County family that has donated significantly to Anderson’s campaign over the years, raising questions about a potential conflict of interest. (Union-Tribune)
- A possible five-day strike by health care workers at Kaiser Permanente facilities is expected to start today involving 31,000 health workers in California and Hawaii. (KPBS)
- A western lowland gorilla broke a layer of a tempered glass panel at the San Diego Zoo over the weekend. (CBS 8)
The Morning Report was written by Jakob McWhinney, Lisa Halverstadt and Tigist Layne. It was edited by Andrea Sanchez-Villafaña.