How tiny Pacific Elementary defied the trend of declining enrollment: Student chefs, small classes and parent volunteers

Every day of the school year, Pacific Elementary School Principal Eric Gross thinks of what words of wisdom or captivating factoid he’ll share during his morning assembly on the school playground for his 193 students and the handful of guardians who stick around to hear it. 

“Practice makes perfect,” “Volunteers,” “Rich then vs. rich now,” and “Octupuses’ Garden” are several of the themes written in the post-its he’s referenced. For the first-day-of-school assembly, he tells families about the school’s meager $2.7 million budget and how parents shouldn’t expect to simply drop off their kid for an education, instead encouraging them to be part of the team that keeps the school functioning. 

Gross, educators and parents say that the morning ritual is one of the many charms that attracts families to the small, aging school overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Davenport, in the northernmost reaches of Santa Cruz County. Some families drive an hour in search of the close-knit community that those traditions have built.

They also believe it’s part of why the single-school district has become an outlier in the county when it comes to declining enrollment. 

When most public school districts across California — including much of Santa Cruz County –  are experiencing persistent declining enrollment, Pacific Elementary School District has been growing its student body more consistently than any other school district in the county over the past decade. 

Even as overall public school enrollment in Santa Cruz County has declined 7.8% over the past eight years, Pacific’s student body has grown more than 60%, creating a waitlist at times in recent years for about half of the school’s grade levels. 

Gross wasn’t expecting another increase in students this year but the school gained six students, for a total of 173 in transition kindergarten through sixth grade, along with 20 preschoolers, for a total of 193 students. When Gross was hired at the school in November 2015, there were 115 students. 

The school is at capacity, he said — it has run out of physical space on its campus. “We can’t build another classroom – we could squeeze in a few in one classroom, and that’s about it,” said Gross. “We’re not looking to grow and we can’t grow.”

Much of that growth has come from families who travel, sometimes long distances, to enroll their children in the school’s nontraditional programs, which feature small class sizes and encourage students to grow vegetables and prepare hot lunches for their classmates in a kitchen overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Davenport, about 10 miles north of Santa Cruz, has a population of about 400 people, and just 36 of the school’s students live in the district. The remaining 155 or so transfer in from other districts, sometimes commuting an hour to the Pacific Elementary campus. 

Despite its growing appeal, the small school district’s budget forces Pacific Elementary to be creative and encourage its parents, guardians, students and even neighbors to take part in maintaining the school. Gross said the school would close down if it weren’t for its transfer students. 

But the small size also has its advantages. “Of the ways in which we do things differently – we like to be small,” he said. “It’s a small community, a small school. We like small classes. If you cram the classes full, that allows you to do more and you make more money. But it’s not a great experience.” 

The school can’t afford a custodian, bus driver or maintenance crew. While it can be unsettling to some parents initially, Gross said, many want to be involved and some end up taking on chores he never even asked for, like building a bench in the school orchard or picking weeds. 

When the notes Gross wrote for his daily morning speech became a collectors’ item among students, the school’s secretary got the idea to compile the daily notes into books, which the school sells to raise money.

Dressed in a short-sleeved dress shirt and khakis on a recent morning for a tour of the coastal campus, Gross, who speaks softly but passionately, said those kinds of small-school eccentricities build a unique sense of community. 

“In a larger institution, it’s harder to feel that. In an institution that’s more traditional, you wouldn’t find something as quirky and silly as this,” he said. “That’s why people find their ways to us. We’re a funky little place that does things differently, and we have a sense of humor about ourselves and are willing to do kind of crazy things.” 

Teachers, parents and Gross also highlight the school’s unique Life Lab and FoodLab programs, which teach students about gardening and cooking, respectively. 

Preschoolers through fourth graders learn how to plant and harvest fresh produce in the 40-year-old school garden while fifth and sixth graders learn how to prepare, cook and serve their classmates lunch every day of the school year — all with ocean views. A student quote on the kitchen wall says, “FoodLab is better than recess.”

Unlike many districts that phased out the program due to eliminated state funding, Pacific has continued to offer Gifted and Talented Education, or GATE, classes at its school. The program offers students nonacademic activities, like editing movies or sewing, to improve student engagement and enhance academic skills. Gross said the school continues to invest in the program, pulling money from its general fund – of which about 85% goes to teacher salaries. 

Gross believes families come to the school because they want a nontraditional way for their children to learn. “They’re heading for something different,” he said. “They’re looking for another way to educate.”

He recalled a presentation on the school’s test scores that he prepared for the school board’s three trustees early on in his tenure. Gross said he got into his second slide of the PowerPoint when one of the former board members stopped him and interrupted. 

“He says, ‘You know, no one here cares about test scores,’” Gross remembered. 

Gross was shocked at first. But then he realized it was “liberating” because educators could do what they believed was right and not feel pressured to conform to conventional academic expectations. They want to teach their kids gardening and cooking skills because they think they’re more important than tests, and at the same time, their kids do perform well on tests. 

He said kids learn from FoodLab, Life Lab and GATE, they enjoy it more and they aren’t interested in studying to take tests. 

“It’s much more fun to learn a different way,” he said. “And so we do things differently because we like it and because it works.” 

County Superintendent of Schools Faris Sabbah said many families are drawn to the school for its intimate size and independent study, garden and cooking programs. He said he’s worked with local districts that were interested in creating cooking programs inspired by Pacific’s. 

Sequoia High School, a small alternative school, successfully implemented a cooking program about six years ago, but school districts with larger populations have had difficulties. 

“The food prep idea of being able to have students working in a commercial kitchen, for example, brought up a lot of different kinds of questions, like, what about liability?” said Sabbah, about district staff concerns about kids getting injured by knives. 

He added that something unique about small schools like Pacific is the extent to which parents become involved as volunteers on field trips and in the classrooms, which is more challenging for larger schools and districts. 

“It’s a very special place, like a lot of our small schools are, and they really have a strong, very family-focused program,” said Sabbah. “You feel the magic of the school when you’re on the campus.”

Pacific parents want small-town feel, cooking and garden programs

Three families who all live outside of the district told Lookout that they chose Pacific Elementary because they felt their children would thrive on a campus where everyone knows each other — and because of the popular cooking and garden programs.

Brett Gravlin and his wife, Ewa, heard about the school and its FoodLab program from a coworker and were immediately interested. 

“We feel lucky to have found it,” he said. “It’s freaking awesome.” 

They’ve been driving their kids, Olive and Ethan, ages 10 and 6, to the school from their Santa Cruz home since they were in first grade and transitional kindergarten. 

Gravlin said the cooking and gardening experience that the kids are gaining gives vital outdoor time for their children, allowing them to move their bodies instead of sitting most of the day. It also builds their independence. 

“Having something a little extra that gives the kids a little more understanding of how food comes into existence – that it doesn’t just come from a store, there’s a whole story behind it,” he said. “It gives the kids a little more responsibility. Their shoulders are a little taller because they get to contribute to what their classmates are eating.” 

Pearl Sotelo and her husband, Manuel, live in Boulder Creek and wanted their sons to have the same experience Manuel had when he was growing up in Davenport and attending Pacific Elementary. Pearl said Manuel loved being in the FoodLab program and the days he would just cross the street from the school and be at the ocean.

It takes her and her husband an hour to drive their sons, Mateo and Javier, ages 13 and 9, to school because they value the small class sizes and the strong sense of community there. 

She said she loves the small community and how everyone knows each other because it feels like everyone is looking out for each other. On their small campus, she said, it’s almost impossible to walk through a room and not interact with someone. 

“I think if they have a profoundly positive early school experience, they will have a positive association with learning and education,” Sotelo said. “That will only stand to serve them well.” 

Pacific Elementary technology and GATE teacher Jennifer Konicke started her own children at the school when they were each in preschool, and now they’re going into fourth and sixth grades. 

“The minute we could come here we did,” she said, adding that they lived in Davenport at the time. They have since moved to Capitola. 

“I feel like every kid has the ability to just be known at our school,” she said. “There’s just no chance for feeling left out or feeling overlooked.” 

A look into the numbers

Santa Cruz County’s public school enrollment declined by 1.5% or 554 students this past year, from 37,841 to 37,287 students compared to the prior year, according to data released by the California Department of Education in May. The county’s enrollment decline far outpaces the statewide drop of 0.54%. 

The vast majority of the students who left the county’s public schools were from Pajaro Valley Unified School District. The district lost 431 students from both its charter and non-charter schools. PVUSD’s traditional schools, not including charters, lost 348 students. Its six charter schools lost 83 students. 

• Bonny Doon Union Elementary School District: One of the county’s smallest school districts, Bonny Doon lost five students this past year, dropping from 97 to 92. The prior year, the single-school district in the mountains lost 18 students.  
• Happy Valley Elementary and Mountain Elementary school districts also lost students: 15 and 20, respectively. Happy Valley Elementary dropped from 122 to 107 students, while Mountain Elementary dropped from 163 to 143 students. 
• San Lorenzo Valley Unified School District was one of the few local districts to see an increase in students overall, including at its charter schools. The total enrollment increased from 5,540 to 5,616. However, that increase was seen exclusively in the charter schools – with 177 additional students – whereas the number of students in its non-charters decreased by 101. 
• Scotts Valley Unified School District lost an overall 128 students, from 2,694 down to 2,566. Its traditional schools added 19 students, but the district lost 147 from its charter schools.
• Santa Cruz City Schools saw its numbers decline for both charter and non-charter schools. The district’s traditional schools lost 44 students, from 6,156 down to 6,112. Its only charter, Delta, lost three students, from 116 to 113. 
• Soquel Union Elementary School District lost 46 students, from 1,566 down to 1,520. It has no charter schools. 
• Live Oak School District lost nine students from its traditional schools, dropping from 1,512 to 1,503. The district’s charter schools gained three students. In total, the district lost six students, down to a total of 1,669. 

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