Duarte Unified projects 10-year enrollment drop; kindergarten capture rate holds at about 68%

Duarte Unified School District officials heard on-the-record demographic projections showing a steady decline in resident student population over the next decade.

The 10-year resident-student forecast, presented by Esau Hoya, project manager for MGT Impact Solutions, estimates a 14% drop in TK–12 resident enrollment over the next five years and a 23% decline over 10 years, with more pronounced declines at the TK and high-school levels.

The forecast rests on mapped student home addresses, birth-rate data from the California Department of Public Health, residential development sampling and neighborhood-level mobility factors derived from three years of student records. Hoya said the local kindergarten “capture rate” — the share of births in the ZIP code who enroll in the district’s kindergarten five years later — has been around 68% in recent years and was used to project future K cohorts.

Why it matters: the district uses resident population forecasts to size staffing, classroom capacity and the facilities work plan. Hillman said the reports are part of a budget-stabilization effort and will help the district “make informed decisions” about long-term fiscal responsibility.

Key findings presented by MGT included: a resident TK–12 total of 2,445 in the 2024 base year projected to fall to 1,867 by the forecast horizon; an estimated 21% decline in TK enrollment over 10 years; and a high-school decline that the presenter summarized as roughly 14% by 2029 and about 29% over the decade. The presenter cautioned that forecasts are most precise in the near term (three to four years) and should be revisited regularly.

Hoya said declining births in ZIP code 91010 were a principal factor: births in that ZIP were 255 in 2019 and had dropped to 201 in the latest available year. He also told the board that newly built market-rate apartment sampling produced very low student yields — “a 50-unit [luxury] building generated, like, two kids,” he said — and therefore recent multifamily development has not materially boosted resident enrollment.

Board members pressed for additional breakdowns. The presenter told the board the student file used a fall 2024 enrollment snapshot (early October) and that, as of that snapshot, 511 of the district’s 2,956 enrolled students lived outside the Duarte district boundary. The consultant said the projected out-of-district enrollment was modeled by applying the resident forecast’s annual rate of change to the current out-of-district population.

The board asked for follow-up work on preschool-to-K transition counts, neighborhood-level patterns (including Bradbury), and whether specific new apartment projects generate meaningful numbers of school-age children; the presenters said those items could be analyzed and provided in subsequent materials.

The board received the report for information and discussion.