At last night’s Board meeting we reviewed a draft of a long-awaited study of student population and enrollment trends. This was commissioned by the Board and superintendent as a result of recent challenges getting everyone enrolled in their neighborhood school. The Board wanted some good historical data and realistic projections on which to base discussion of any potential changes.
To be clear, it’s possible the Board could adjust service area boundaries (i.e., the areas which each school in the District serves). But that’s not the only possible response. If the problem is short-term, a decision could be made to just muddle through. If it’s longer-term we could look at expanding the number of classrooms at some of the schools. Or a decision to restrict how many out of district students attend our schools as charter transfers could be made. Whatever direction or directions we move, though, having good information and projections will be very helpful.
The work done by the consultants was some of the best I can recall seeing as a trustee. There were a lot of interesting pieces of information in the draft report, and there will be even more in the final report. Among the onesI found most interesting were the following:
- About 400 students from outside the District boundaries attend our schools. That’s about 14% of our total enrollment.
- Over the next ten years District enrollment probably won’t get much higher than it is now. But it will go up before falling back to roughly today’s level.
- With the exception of Heather, all our schools will continue to be quite full for the next ten years.
- The middle schools will likely be relatively more full than the elementary schools.
There will be more discussion of demographics when the final report is delivered, as well as afterwards when the Board debates what actions, if any, should be taken in response. As the decisions coming out of those discussions could affect everyone in the District, they’ll definitely be something to monitor.
If you’d like to review the entire draft you can get it from the District office, or read or download it as a PDF from my site (be forewarned, it’s about 8MB).