In an update this year, the Roseville Joint Union High School District released potential changes to the district attendance boundary in light of the sixth high school opening.

The new high school will open in August 2020 to ninth and tenth graders, with a grade level being added over the course of the following two years.

According to Roseville Joint Union High School District superintendent Ron Severson, the school will open with about 600 students.

In a district document mapping the future attendance boundaries, the sixth high school will receive most of their students from West Roseville.

Currently, most of West Roseville residents send students to Oakmont High School. Coupled with increased housing development, Oakmont Hig School’s enrollment is projected to reach 2,329 students by the 2019-2020 school year, up from 1,891 students last year.

But after the sixth high school opens, Oakmont’s population is predicted to decrease.

“Oakmont’s natural population will drop to about 1,500 kids over the next five years,” Severson said. “We think Oakmont is going to be at 1,600 to 1,700 kids for the long term.“

Roseville High School’s attendance boundary also includes parts of West Roseville. However, according to principal David Byrd, the new attendance boundaries will have a minimal effect on RHS.

“We are one of those schools that’s not anticipated to have a huge shift in enrollment,” Byrd said. “And our enrollment shifts are going to happen slowly and gradually once the new school starts over the next several years.”

Antelope High School is the most recent high school to have opened, opening in 2008. Prior to its opening in, RJUHSD Board of Trustees vice president Paige Stauss worked on the committee responsible for determining new attendance boundaries for the district. The committee made a recommendation for new attendance boundaries to the district. According to Strauss, one of the criteria was to impact as few students as possible.

“It was a pretty difficult thing,” Stauss said. “The board accepted their recommendations with one exception, and that was, their plan allowed Oakmont’s population to drop too much and Oakmont had already gone through that when Granite Bay opened. And we didn’t want to allow that to happen again. So we ended up with some strange anomalies to keep Oakmont’s population going.”

However, for the sixth high school, there are currently no plans to create a committee to finalize attendance boundaries.

“For me, it’s just too early,” Stauss said. “It causes a lot of angst for people and I’d just wait until we’re a little bit closer to really look at it and finalize it. And if we think we need a boundary committee then we’ll establish a boundary committee.”

This August, Orchard Ranch elementary school opened in West Roseville. At a back to school night event, Severson spoke with parents about the new high school opening in West Roseville.

“Just about everybody I met was not only new, they had moved into the home in that area, but they were new to Roseville,” Severson said. “They had come from all over the Bay Area especially. It seemed like everyone I talked to was from Fremont, they were from Sunnyvale.”

According to Severson, he noticed increased diversity in the West Roseville community, more than Woodcreek or Granite Bay.

“There’s been more diversity,” Severson said. “I think it’s reflective of the diversity in the Bay Area that has sort of transplanted to Roseville. So it’ll be an interesting dynamic.”