Harriet Eddy Middle School is having a hard time competing with the new kid in town – the joint campus of Elizabeth Pinkerton Middle and Cosumnes Oaks High, which opened in 2008 and sits just a few miles from Harriet Eddy in Laguna Creek.

Open enrollment, which allows parents to choose another campus over their child's neighborhood school, has depleted Harriet Eddy's student body. Kids from most of the district's eight other middle schools are asking to go to Elizabeth Pinkerton, but Eddy appears to have been hit the worst.

Last year, 240 children normally bound for Eddy chose open enrollment. Most went to Pinkerton. For the coming school year, an additional 240 children that automatically would have gone to Eddy applied to go to another school.

Struck by the exodus from Eddy, Elk Grove Unified School District board members hit the pause button last week on the district's open enrollment process.

"It's our action and nothing else that is allowing this to happen," said board member Brian Myers.

Board members asked district administrators to review state open enrollment law to see if it's legal to cap the number of students allowed to leave a single campus – perhaps no more than 5 or 10 percent.

If trustees do approve an open enrollment cap, schools beyond the limit would have to offer families a lottery. Trustees are expected to vote on the cap at their March 3 meeting.

If allowed to continue unabated, open enrollment could "devastate Harriet Eddy down to numbers that will be untenable from an educational point of view," Myers said Monday.

The Pinkerton campus was built in anticipation of Madeira – a new housing development that never got off the ground. There were no new houses and no new students, but the campus still opened in fall 2008 as scheduled. The board allowed for open enrollment in large numbers at Pinkerton last year.

According to the district's latest tally of open enrollment requests for 2009-10, Harriet Eddy would have an enrollment of 691 next year; Pinkerton would have 914.

"It's appalling to me," trustee Chet Madison said.

The majority of students applying to go to Pinkerton instead of Harriet Eddy come from Foulks Ranch Elementary – 160 sixth-graders who hadn't yet set foot on the Harriet Eddy campus.

Edward Harris Middle got 76 requests from students looking to go to another school.

Linda Murray, acting executive director of Ed Trust West, an education policy organization, said the district needs to look a bit closer at the shift.

"Why are parents moving their kids?" Murray said. "Is it just that (Pinkerton's) a brand new school or are there other things going on? Could it be about perception? Or could it be about the reality of the program in that school?"

"Do a survey. There are plenty of older schools with plenty of charm and great things going on in inside their walls," she said.

Students at Harriet Eddy are doing well academically. For three years straight, they've increased their scores on the Academic Performance Index – up 13 points during the 2005-06 school year, 19 points in 2006-07 and 20 points in 2007-08.

The state ranks Harriet Eddy's academic performance fourth-highest among Elk Grove's nine middle schools, and Principal Peter Lambert was named principal of the year last year by California State University, Sacramento.

Every eighth-grader at Harriet Eddy takes algebra.

Angela Jemmott, president of Concerned African American Parents, wonders if the transfers are about race.

When the school opened in 1994, it was more than 50 percent white; last year, white children made up less than 29 percent of the population.

"No one wants to admit that they are afraid to be in the middle of diverse community," Jemmott said. "When some parents see a growing population of minorities at their school, they say, 'I want to have freedom of choice,' without admitting its a racial issue."

But Jemmott also said the movement from Eddy could be blamed on poor residential and school facility planning.

"A mistake was made in opening Pinkerton," she said. "The community never grew, and it won't for another five to 10 years. It doesn't make sense to destroy one school to build up another."

Call The Bee's Melissa Nix, (916) 321-1090.