Despite the parents of school-age children in Landers wanting Landers Elementary School to remain open, the attendance numbersat the school just aren’t holding up. This is leading to the very distinct possibility the school will be shuttered with the beginning of the 2027-28 school year.
Since 2020, statewide with only some very small pockets of variance, public school enrollment in California has dropped by a cumulative total of over 400,000 students.
The total public school enrollment in California for the 2025–26 school year was 5,731,260 for students from kindergarten through the 12th grade, according to the California Department of Education. Enrollment throughout the state dropped by 1.3 percent, or 74,961 students, compared to the previous year. Traditional public schools’ enrollments fell by 1.4 percent, while charter public schools declined by 0.3 percent. State officials attribute the drop to declining birth rates and shifts in migration and immigration.
As a consequence, California over the previous six to eight years, for the first extended time in at least seven generations, has no longer been in intensive school campus construction mode.
California’s student-age population drop-off, while proving a headache for education professionals who have become reliant on student enrollment revenue, is not, for the most part, overly alarming, in generally terms otherwise.
There are some isolated geographical exceptions.
In Morongo Valley or what is commonly referred to as the Highway 62 communities and their surrounding areas, the phenomenon of fewer students has become a problem and in a real way, that problem has become acute.
Despite the Morongo Unified School District being San Bernardino County’s largest school district geographically at 1,342.44 square miles, there are 17 other school districts in the county with a more substantial student enrollment.
According to the district, student enrollment reached over 10,000 at one point but is down substantially now. While the district’s website states that the district serves 8,000 students across 16 schools, in public hearings, district officials have placed that number as close to 7,300 at present.
With 11 elementary schools, two middle schools and three high schools, the number of students in the district had reached enrollment of 7,359 students in the 2013–2014 school year; 9,439 in 2014-15; 9,439 in 2014-15 and topped out at 10,265 in 2015-16. The following year, in 2016-17, the number dropped significantly to 8,466 before making a slight climb to 8,616 in 2018-19 and again to 8,652 in 2017-18. Thenceforward, the numbers declined 8,481 in 2019-20; 8,005 in 2020-21; 7,580 in 2021-22; 7407 in 2022-23; 7359 in 2023-24 and 7225 in 2024-25. In the face of the declining enrollment crisis, district official undertook a concerted effort to convince at least some of an estimated 350 parents who homeschool their children that they should return them to the traditional public school environment. The district officially claimed to the state that there are 7,305 students enrolled in 2025-26.
Prognostication suggests that by 2031, the number of students in the district will have attrited to approximately 6,821.
Schools within the district consist of Condor Elementary School in Twentynine Palms, located on the grounds of the US Marine Corps Base; Friendly Hills Elementary School; Joshua Tree Elementary School; Landers Elementary School; Morongo Valley Elementary School; Oasis Elementary School in Twentynine Palms; Onaga Elementary School in Yucca Valley; Palm Vista Elementary School in Twentynine Palms; Twentynine Palms Elementary School; Yucca Mesa Elementary School, which offers instruction from Kindergarten to the 8th grade; Yucca Valley Elementary School along with La Contenta Middle School in Yucca Valley; Twentynine Palms Junior High School, which was the original all purpose elementary, jurnior high and high school in the town in the 1950s, as well as Twentynine Palms High School, Yucca Valley High School and Black Rock Continuation High School,
The Palm Vista, Landers and Morongo Valley elementary schools have fewer than 350 students each and at present are receiving in per diem reimbursements for those students’ daily attendance an amount of money from the state that in total is less than what it is costing the district to operate them.
Nearly a year ago, the district’s board asked Superintendent Patricio Vargas to take a look at the circumstance and see if he could come up with some ideas. Vargas got the board to spring for hiring SchoolWorks Inc., a consulting firm, to assist him in cataloging the district’s options. A major issue is that the cost of running each school is substantial and the savings that could be had by mothballing a campus or two or three would create some economies of scale that would prevent the squandering of precious district money on items or a collection of items that do not directly contribute to or assist in accomplishing the district’s educational mission. SchoolWorks suggested that the district close at least one and perhaps all three of the underattened schools as well as, perhaps, Friendly Hills. This would require that the district defray the cost of bussing students a considerable distance to the next closest campus, including six busses roughly 16 miles from back and forth from Landers to Joshua Tree six days a week.
Some parents, students and teachers at or associated with the schools tentatively targeted for closure expressed opposition to the closure option.
In January, the district formed an enrollment advisory committee.
The committee, SchoolWorks Inc., Superintendent Patricio Vargas and other senior district staff outlined options on how the district should deal with the declining enrollment have been outlined. While campus closures are not the only solution, according to Vargas the most sensible way of approaching the matter is to contemplate the closure of at least one of the schools by August 2027 at the beginning of the 2027-28 school year with further closures to follow thereafter.
On April 9 at a committee meeting, Vargas broached this as “a gradual decrease in the number of schools and adjustment of busing routes.”
Vargas said the district could, if it chose, leave all schools in place and open, make some school attendance boundary changes and live with the enrollment in as many as eight of the district’s 11 elementary schools have their enrollment fall below 350 by 2031.
The district could, Vargas said, close Palm Vista, Landers and Morongo Valley elementary schools and reassign students to the closest campuses. This would entail the district adding eight bus routes, which would increase transportation costs by $3 million. The transportation cost increases would be matched or more than offset by savings from the school closures, Vargas said. Even with the shuttering of Palm Vista, Landers and Morongo Valley, he said three of the schools that would remain open would see their enrollments dip to below 350 by school year 2031-32.
The district could also, Vargas said, close Landers Elementary and bus those students to Yucca Mesa Elementary. This would require the addition of three bus routes with the maximum drive time for one such bus being 57 minutes, less than the current 72 minutes. This would put kindergarteners though 8th graders on the same buses as high school students. Six of the remaining ten elementary schools would see reductions in the number of their students to below 350 by 2031-32.
Another approach Vargas outlined would be for Morongo Valley Elementary to close, with its students sent to Yucca Valley Elementary School. This would require the addition of two bus routes, in which the maximum trip time would drop from 67 to 56 minutes. Seven of the remaining ten schools would see an attrition to less than 350 students by 2031-32.
A contemplated move is the closure of Palm Vista, with the displaced students moved to either Oasis or Twentynine Palms Elementary. This would call for the addition of three bus routes, with students spending as many as 50 minutes going to school and 50 minutes returning home. Six of the district’s elementary schools would have fewer than 350 students by 2031-32 under this plan.
Members of the committee found the ferocity of the parental reaction to the closures daunting.
Some of those parents charged Vargas and other district officials with panicking needlessly. Those parents, citing a statement of somewhat doubtful providence attributed to the California Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, which advises school districts on fiscal matters and traces the mismanagement of education funding, advising that Morongo Unified’s closing of campuses was not necessary.
Some community members, including at least one member of the committee, were skeptical of refusals by Vargas and a so-called facilitator with SchoolWorks Inc., Dr. Stella Kemp, to disclose bottom lines on carryovers from the current 2025-26 budget and the numbers under preparation for the 2026-27 budget.
Accordingly, late in the 2025-26 school year and into the summer, the school board shied away from making any school campus closure after the Enrollment Committee made its recommendation that the district make other budget adjustments to the district’s looming $7 million deficit in order to avoid shuttering any of the elementary schools.
Fiscal reality, however, has converted the plan of keeping all 16 school campuses running a hope and that hope is becoming untenable.
It appears that the district and its officials are now purposed to see Landers Elementary School, located at 56450 Reche Road in Landers, closed and its students consolidated with the students attending school at the district’s closest campus, that of Yucca Mesa Elementary.
The enrollment numbers at Landers are down this year to 106 students, a drop from 120 students last year and a string of number reductions going back several years. The profile of the community within the attendance boundaries of Landers Elementary show that the number of elementary age school children will not increase over the next four to seven years.
During previous enrollment committee meetings, it was revealed that the district receives from the State of California $16,000 for each enrolled student. The maintenance costs at Landers Elementry School alone eat up roughly $1.3 million to $1.4 million of the $1,696,000 the district receives to educate the students attending there.
According to Vargas, a fiscally rationale standard is that each school in the district have, at a minimum, 400 students in attendance. The economies of scale in balancing the delivery of educational services and maintaining a clean and safe environment conducive to learning make any school with fewer students sub-optimal and therefore a drain on the district financially that over time will not be sustainable, he maintains. Closing one or more campuses would require a reorganization in the intensity of use of bus transportation resources, but relatively speaking, according to the numbers, that added expense is overwhelmed by the savings the district will realize from each calculated campus closure.
Among the schools looked at previously for closure were Yucca Mesa Elementary, Palm Vista in Twentynine Palms and Morongo Valley Elementary. If Landers Elementary students are to be sent to Yucca Mesa Elementary, that school, by necessity will remain open.
While Landers Elementary is of certain importance to the town and people of Landers as both a social and cultural hub, elsewhere in California other schools with far more substantial attendance numbers have been closed in recent years. Between August of 2025 and July of 2026, 73 public school in California were closed. Those schools – 29 of which were elementary schools, 13 that were middle schools, 13 high schools, eight kindergarten through 12th grade schools, three alternative schools, three special education schools, two community day schools, one continuation high school and one county community school – averaged 261 students each, more than twice as many students as are currently enrolled at Landers Elementary.