It’s been several years since Benicia Unified School District closed Mills Elementary, the oldest of its five elementary schools and the only one located downtown.
Back then, it seemed like the sensible thing to do. The population base was maturing and as a by-product of that, school enrollment, particularly at the elementary school level was declining. The district couldn’t justify keeping five schools open when four offered plenty of capacity for Benicia’s youth population.
But now that property values have declined — back to about 2002 or 2003’s levels here in Benicia, we’re again seeing more and more first-time and young-family home buyers.
That’s a stark contrast to what occurred during the earlier part of this decade, when rapidly rising home prices essentially slammed the door shut on most first-time buyers. 
With even a modest single family home priced well into the $500,000’s as recently as 2006, most homebuyers who were in their early adult lives were effectively priced out of Benicia housing market.
Today, though, with some single family homes priced as low as the $300,000’s, doors which had previously been closed to many young families wanting to live in Benicia have opened again — and in a big way, thanks too to record-low mortgage rates.
A perfect case in point is our daughter’s young family. Still in their 20’s, they moved back to Benicia and rented a townhome in 2005. At the time, the prospects of she and her husband ever being able to buy a home in Benicia were daunting. They were just starting out in their respective fields and watched as home prices continued to climb — on just about a weekly basis.
Last year, now well established in their career paths, a combination of falling home prices and interest rates enabled them to buy a home that two years earlier would have felt like a pipe dream.
The home previously was owned by a single lady, whose children had long ago graduated from Benicia’s schools. Our daughter and son-in-law have a two-year old and another on the way.
So a home that had once contributed to Benicia’s school population and later contributed to its declining enrollment will, within a few years, again be contributing to the school population.
And with more and more Benicia home buyers in that 25-35 age group, it’s very likely that we could see the school district’s recent declining enrollment pattern quickly reversed.
I haven’t heard or read anything locally indicating that the schools are poised to see enrollments increase once more. So this is merely an observation on my part. But it makes sense: with so many more young families now able to afford Benicia’s home prices, it just seems to follow that we should again start to see an increase in school enrollments.
When we moved to Benicia in the mid-1980s, it was well within the price range of many first-time buyers. So the school population increased dramatically, to the point where two new elementary schools were built beween the mid-1980s and early 1990s to accommodate all the new construction.
Today, there aren’t very many un-built lots left in town, so I don’t think we have to worry about the remaining vacant lots in the Water’s End ever creating a large enough housing impact to warrant a new school.
However, depending on how long prices and mortgage rates remain as low as they are right now, if enough buyers with school age children continue to buy in Benicia, it’s possible that in time, our four remaining schools could again be bursting at the seams.
Which begs the question: Did we close Mills Elementary too soon?
Time will tell. Hopefully the folks running our school district are putting two and two together and keeping a close eye on things.
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