The multipurpose room, or MPR, is a standard feature of California schools — a big, often drab room where you can stage a play or a science fair.
But the MPR at what used to be Bernardo Yorba Middle School in Yorba Linda was converted last fall into a high-tech gym. Brand new training equipment lines the walls — seven of the machines cost more than $10,000 each, according to invoices reviewed by LAist.
Next door, the "recovery center" has plush recliners equipped with red-light therapy. During a recent visit, a high school wrestler named Max kicked back in one of the chairs after a workout, wearing compression boots, retail price $800.
“ It makes your body feel, like, recovered,” he told me, adding that it’s “kinda like a massage.”
What's this place all about?
It's called the Universal Sports Institute. It's a free, public school program for students in grades three through 12 — part of the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District. Its students are homeschooled through the district's independent study program, which gets state funding for each student, and then go to the Universal Sports Institute, to work with professional trainers. The school facilities have been converted for use by the sports institute and an adjacent computer science charter school.
Superintendent Alex Cherniss was the brainchild behind the program, which started last fall.
“Like many districts in California, we've been struggling with enrollment,” Cherniss told me after I visited the sports institute in December. “And so I got to thinking, well, maybe this is a way to keep our kids, but also maybe to attract kids from all over.”
As California’s population ages, there are fewer students attending public school. That creates a big budget problem for some school districts — they get state funding based on the number of kids they serve.
Enrollment decline
Over the past decade, Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified has enrolled around 400 fewer students each year on average — a loss of millions of dollars annually.
That might just be a demographic reality. But Cherniss thinks at least some of those kids are going to private or charter schools, or homeschooling, which gives them a more flexible schedule.
“Athletics, in general, right now is becoming much more specialized,” he said, “and so there are a lot of kids that train all day and do homeschool. So if you're going to do that, why not do it through us?”
But the sports institute, like many school issues in recent years, has divided this well-to-do O.C. community. And its future, in the face of a district budget deficit, is uncertain.
A new controversy, on top of many
In recent years, the Placentia-Yorba Linda district has become a battleground in the culture wars and a focus of the so-called parental rights movement. The district was one of the first in California to ban the teaching of critical race theory, in 2022. They were also among the first to establish a parental notification policy, in 2023.
The sports institute is the latest target of the infighting. Critics have demanded more transparency about the contracts and services behind the project.
They say the sports institute was an overly expensive vanity project pushed by Cherniss and the former school board majority. That majority lost its dominance in the November election, and shortly afterwards, Cherniss was put on indefinite leave pending an internal investigation. Neither Cherniss nor district leaders responded to LAist’s questions about the leave.
Now, having lost its principal backer, the sports institute is facing tough questions.
Currently, there are only about a hundred kids enrolled, and district staff estimate the program will end this year about $1 million in the hole. School leaders hope to double the number of enrollees in the program next year, and they say they’re working to make the equipment and training opportunities available to more students in the district, beyond those enrolled in the sports institute.
At a recent meeting, school board members argued over how they might get more bang for their buck out of the red light therapy chairs.
“ We can spread them out to all, one to each high school,” suggested board president Marilyn Anderson, who’s been critical of the sports institute’s rollout.
“You cannot move those; they're not portable,” shot back trustee Leandra Blades, one of the school’s chief cheerleaders.
“It was moved there in the first place. It can be moved to facilitate students,” Anderson started before being cut off by Blades’ board ally, Todd Frazier.
“So you’re trying to dismantle USI,” Frazier accused Anderson, referring to the school by its acronym.
The problem of declining enrollment
California’s Department of Finance predicts that half a million fewer kids will be enrolled in K-12 schools across the state within a decade. That’s mostly because fertility rates have declined and more families with children move out of the state than move in.
In Orange County, K-12 enrollment peaked in 2003 and has been on a steady decline ever since, according to finance department data.
The pandemic also led many families to abandon public schools — some because of their disagreement with masking policies or their children’s difficulty with distance learning, others because of health reasons or family struggles.
Some Southern California districts have had to make tough budget choices in recent years to manage the declining state revenue that comes with each student — in 2023, Baldwin Park Unified closed two elementary schools, and Ocean View School District, which covers parts of Huntington Beach and surrounding cities, closed one middle school after initially considering closing an additional three elementary schools.
Against this backdrop, districts across the state have been expanding their offerings — dual language immersion programs, performing arts schools, coding academies — in an effort to keep the students they have and attract new ones.
Is it up to schools to boost enrollment?
UCLA education professor John Rogers is skeptical of the idea that school districts should be spending time and money developing and promoting new products, like an elite sports institute, to try and combat enrollment declines.
“School districts really were not created with the understanding that it was their responsibility to market to members of the community the same way that Walmart or other businesses do,” he said. (Placentia-Yorba Linda spent $7,500 to advertise the Universal Sports Institute at John Wayne Airport during a four-week period last year.)
“ Schools and school districts are in place because they're serving a public good,” Rogers said. “ I don't think that the state should put the onus on school districts for resolving all of these broader issues of demographic change.”
On the other hand, proponents of the so-called school choice movement, which includes promoting vouchers whereby families can use public funds to pay for private school, say the competition forces public schools to improve their offerings.
“ Education's changing. Let's create new programs that excite families,” said Cherniss, the former Placentia-Yorba Linda superintendent. “We could do nothing and not try new things and not invest in programs like this and, you know, there'd be no innovation. So there's some risk here.”
The sports institute’s future
The Placentia-Yorba Linda school board is set to discuss budget cuts, including, potentially, to the Universal Sports Institute, at its next meeting on April 8. Already, the program has made preliminary staffing cuts, USI director Taylor Holloway told the board at their February meeting.
“We understand it’s our responsibility to operate more conservatively going forward,” Holloway said.
The uncertainty makes parent Heather Sargeant nervous. She said her two boys have thrived at the sports institute — one hopes to play volleyball at a Division 1 college, the other is a serious soccer player.
“As a former athlete myself, I would've absolutely died for an opportunity like this,” Sargeant said. “And I'm sure most families are in the same boat as us where we can't afford to send our children to a private sports institute. And so the fact that a public school was offering something like this … it was something we really wanted to try for our family.”
Sargeant said she’d like to see the sports institute be accessible to more families — she said the school has been especially convenient for them because they live nearby, her boys can ride their scooters to campus, and she’s a stay-at-home mom.
“ I think every parent's dream is to give their kids whatever they possibly can,” she said. “And so because of that, I would love for schools like this, whether it's for theater, whether it's for arts, for STEM, for sports, would be accessible to more kids.”
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- The next Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District board meeting is at 6 p.m. on April 8 at 1301 E. Orangethorpe Ave., Placentia.
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- You can also watch the meeting live through the district's website (find the meeting date and click "Watch Live").
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- To make a comment at the meeting in person, fill out a public comment form (available at the meeting) and turn it in before the public comment period posted on the agenda.
Other schools in Orange County are trying to cater to sports-focused families, but not necessarily at the same cost. Fullerton Unified School District also started an elite sports program last fall.
Student athletes take their core classes on campus and work with an outside trainer in the afternoon in lieu of PE and one of their electives.
The district lends its fields at Parks Junior High for training, and scholarships are available, but otherwise families are responsible for paying for the athletic part of their kids’ day.
As a result, that program costs the school district next to nothing.
