The massive seismic shift in the ethnic makeup of San Mateo County’s public school student body is continuing unabated. Statistics released this summer indicate that an inexorable trend that began many years ago rolls on with few signs of diminishing. According to the latest numbers provided by the state, local public schools on the Peninsula contained 88,983 students in grades kindergarten through 12 in 2007-08, a very slight increase over the previous year. Of those youngsters, 34.7 percent were of Hispanic descent; 32.6 percent were Caucasian. Asian and Filipino children were 11.8 percent and 10 percent respectively and the rest were African-American, Pacific Islander and individuals representing other categories. Hispanic pupils became the county’s largest single ethnic student entity two years ago. That was an historic first for the Peninsula. To keep matters in some perspective, in 1970, the county’s public schools contained about 125,000 students, roughly 113,000 of them Caucasian. So, over a period of 38 years, the county has lost something on the order of 84,000 white kids. So-called minority youths have gone from 12,000 to almost 60,000 during that same time-frame. All of this has implications for local public schools, from test scores to graduation rates and fluency in English to four-year college admissions. The state’s most recent figures measure only public school pupils. Those in private and parochial schools are not involved in the data. In San Mateo County, one in every six children attends a non-public school.