Cutting off transfers slightly aids overpopulated Los Gatos High

Transferring between schools has been a part of the Los Gatos-Saratoga Unified High School District for a long time, but now the situation will change next fall when the district shuts down down the freedom for Saratoga students to transfer to Los Gatos.

Even though this change has been controversial, the overall difference it makes is minimal. Students attending Los Gatos will still be able to transfer to Saratoga, but transfers from the Saratoga district to Los Gatos will be limited to special cases only.

While some may say limiting the traffic of students switching between schools will indeed change the schools overall, the truth is the number of students affected by this policy is very few. Only 10 to 15 students actually transfer between schools each year, making the new policy somewhat insignificant to the overall outlook of the district.

This slightly benefits Los Gatos as they are being relieved of the high student population that they currently have. Even though 10-15 students is not much of a change in the population there, it still is a slight degree of change from the extreme overcrowding that Los Gatos has faced in the past.
With a student population of approximately 1,800 students Los Gatos will exceed its capacity in a short amount of time. Saratoga, with 1,350 students, is trying to help the situation.

The 10 to 15 transfers that take place each year are due to a variety of reasons. The most obvious reasons are for the more competitive athletics and less competitive academics at Los Gatos, but some believe that a few Caucasian students transfer for the purpose of attending a ‘whiter’ school.

A few students who had felt that Los Gatos would give them a better opportunity to play competitive sports would transfer to Los Gatos instead of attending Saratoga. While the small handful of athletes this affects will now be stopped from going to Los Gatos, they can still go to a private school if they feel that Saratoga is not up to their standards. In other words, don’t expect SHS to become a sports powerhouse as a result of the change.

In reality, cutting off the ability to transfer to Los Gatos is actually a minor detail that will go unnoticed by most students.