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Davis city and school district begin cross-agency planning for general plan update, focusing on housing, school enrollment and timeline
Summary
City and Davis Joint Unified School District officials said the general plan update will shape land use and school enrollments through 2050; staff highlighted uncertainty about future state allocation numbers, the need for parent-focused outreach, and student-yield differences by housing type.
City and school district officials on May 20 opened a joint conversation about how Davis's once-in-a-generation general plan update could affect housing, jobs and K-12 enrollment.
Sherry, a city presenter leading the general plan overview, described the general plan as the city's long-range policy document for land use and said staff are planning for the next 25 years even though the state's future allocation numbers (referred to in the discussion as "REAP") are not yet known. "We need to start thinking about how are we going to address the requirements that come from the state," she said.
Superintendent Best urged the two bodies to coordinate on demographic work. The district's demographer has cataloged parcels by decade of construction and produced student-yield factors that the district said will help project school needs: single-family homes built in the last decade have a student-yield factor of about 0.877, while earlier single-family homes have a lower yield (about 0.345); recent apartments were reported to have a yield factor near 0.098. "That's sort of an interesting look," the demographer said, adding that the age and design of housing influence how many school-age children it yields.
City staff outlined planning trade-offs tied to density and zoning. "General plan land use designations tend to generally have a very sort of high-level description," Sherry said, explaining that the general plan sets density ranges and zoning translates those ranges into lot and building standards. She noted the council will need to weigh legal nonconforming situations if density ranges are increased for areas that do not match current built conditions.
Officials discussed the timing gap between rezoning decisions and actual changes on the ground. Director Metzger and other participants emphasized that upzoning alone does not immediately produce new housing or a predictable number of new students. "Just because you up-zone a parcel... it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to yield the density that you're seeking," one participant said, noting that redevelopment and population change typically unfold over years.
Participants agreed on next steps for coordination and outreach: the city's consultant team has already met with district staff, staff proposed a demographic presentation to the trustees, and both sides discussed parent-focused outreach sessions and pop-up events to gather community input. Sherry said the city will present early findings in various forums, likely in the early fall, before any formal council decisions.
The meeting concluded with a request for more research and scenario planning to estimate how fast upzoning could translate into housing and student enrollment, and with a plan to continue cross-agency engagement.
The two-by-two noted the next meeting between the city and district is scheduled for Sept. 16, 2026.
