For the first time in nearly six years, student enrollment for the 2024-2025 school year dipped by 3.9% compared with the previous term, school officials said.

Principal Craig Weinreich attributed the decline to a trend occurring nationwide since the COVID-19 pandemic starting in late 2020.

“It’s not a huge dip, but we did hear about the district as a whole seeing a slow decline, and it’s finally getting to us,” Weinreich said.

From 2019-2023, enrollment averaged just over 2,400 students, according to The California Department of Education. From the 2019-2020 to the 2020-2021 school year, the enrollment increased by 2.6% at 2,401 students.

Then from the 2020-2021 to the 2021-2022 school year, the total bumped up again at 0.87% at 2,422 students. And then from the 2021-2022 to the 2022-2023 school year, the total number of students rose 0.21% at 2,429 students.

For the 2023-2024 school year, state records show the school had 2,434 enrolled students. As of Monday, Sept. 23, the total number of students at Sunny Hills has reduced to 2,339 with a breakdown of 535 freshmen, 583 sophomores, 607 juniors and 614 seniors.

Weinreich said he does not plan to do anything to address the enrollment “dip.”

“It is nothing school-related but more so external factors that are causing this to happen,” the principal said. “The district as a whole has been seeing a slow, steady decline for the last 15 years, but it’s not a huge jump.”

The principal attributed these additional factors that he said he cannot control for the lower number of students this school year:

• Many families with younger children are moving out of North Orange County into more affordable areas.
• Such movement has fueled a decrease in students enrolling in elementary and middle schools like Parks Junior High School which in turn lead to fewer students to come to the high schools in the district.

Despite this trend, Weinreich said Sunny Hills has managed to go against it with his predecessor’s implementation of campus tours for parents and students and the push toward organizing a more appealing Open House for visitors.

During his time at Sunny Hills as an assistant principal, he also implemented the Coding and Gaming Pathway, which Weinreich aimed to strengthen last school year when he started his first full year as a principal. In that time, he hired former site tech Sonya Joyce as a gaming and coding teacher.

Like Weinreich, many returning students don’t feel a need for school officials to address this “dip.”

“I’m not too concerned about the decline because nobody that I know is moving schools,” sophomore Josef Hudak said. “There are still a lot of people going to the football games and all the other school events, and the amount of people seems to be about the same.”

Junior Tyler Talag, who’s a third baseman on the baseball team, has noticed a decrease in the number of people on the team, but does not see that as something to worry about.

“The reason for fewer students could just be because we had a graduating class of 14 seniors last year,” Talag said. “I feel like a smaller team will benefit the players since more of us will be able to play in games and help build upon other skills in different positions for those that happen to play after high school.”

In fact, some programs have seen a growth in size with more people joining the class. Senior Kastuv Aryal, a member of the Associated Student Body [ASB] said that this year, the class has its highest number of students. 

“It excites me to see so many students getting involved [in ASB],” Aryal said. “It shows me that people are more willing to step out of their comfort zones and explore new activities, which is great for the future of these programs.”

One area Sunny Hills remains strong in is drawing in transfer students, the principal said. That could explain why the enrollment this school year did not have a steeper drop.

“We have a lot of permit transfer students who come to [Sunny Hills] from other districts,” Weinreich said. “A lot of them transferred from Norwalk, La Mirada, Anaheim and Whittier.”

One such example of a transfer student is senior Reagan Stagg, who came from Chatsworth Charter High School in the Los Angeles Unified School District [LAUSD] during the second semester of her sophomore year.

Stagg said her decision to transfer came primarily from the lack of importance given to standardized testing, the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress. She found out about Sunny Hills since her grandfather lived by Sunset Lane Elementary School, and the campus happened to be her home school after moving to the area. 

“Since I didn’t do well on the [LAUSD] testing, [the school] put me in lower classes,” she said. “My learning got really poor because of that, so I decided to move to Sunny Hills to get a better education.”

Some teachers are also not concerned with student enrollment.

“I’m not worried about it because we are a strong school academically, and I know a lot of people who have transferred here say that it is the best decision they have made,” said science teacher Kelly Kim, who enrolled her oldest daughter here last year as a freshman.

Social science teacher Troy Nelson said the number of students in his classes has decreased since the last school year, with his fourth-period class only having 28 people, but he does not worry about the enrollment levels.

“Most of my classes are on the cusp of how many students I can have, but one of my classes is really small,” Nelson said. “I also know that there were fewer freshmen at orientation over the summer, so that could also be a contributing factor to my class size.”

However, some students did share a concern about how a continued decline in enrollment in successive years could impact students and the programs that Sunny Hills has to offer.

“More people on a [sports] team is always good,” said senior James Sy, who’s on the swim team. “How many people we have on the team is directly correlated with how strong the team is, so hearing about the decline strikes a little worry.”

Senior Gianna Garcia, who is a member of Link Crew and the Advancement Via Individual Determination [AVID] programs, said that the decline in enrollment has been evident in her AVID class as well as the amount of freshmen present during orientation.

“I noticed fewer people in my AVID class since it was a packed class last year and now we only have around 20 people,” Garcia said. “It makes me worry a little bit since if fewer people join in the coming years, then slowly, these programs will become less known.”

Nevertheless, Weinreich said he does not feel as though this decline in student enrollment this school year will negatively impact Sunny Hills in the future.

“We’re still above projected enrollment, fully staffed and kids are able to get all the classes that they need,” he said. “At this point, it’s not going to affect anything because it would take a pretty significant decline [for that to happen], and I don’t foresee that right now.”