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MGT forecast: district to see modest enrollment decline; kindergarten capture rate steady
Summary
MGT demographer Marcy Horner presented a 10-year forecast showing a gradual decline in resident students driven by lower birth cohorts and modest changes in retention; the consultant said district housing projects total about 304 units spread over 10 years and that the district could see a 5.5% decrease in the next five years.
Marcy Horner of MGT (formerly Davis Demographics) presented Albany County School District #1 trustees with the final year of a three-year forecasting contract and a 10-year student enrollment projection.
Horner said the forecast is built from student-address data, birth counts, mobility (cohort survival) and student-yield factors for planned housing. She told trustees the district had 291 kindergarten students in the most recent year and that the kindergarten capture rate—what share of resident kindergarten-age children enroll in district kindergarten—was about 81 percent last year.
"The births for 2020 are 30 children," Horner said. She added that because births have trended downward, the district should expect smaller future kindergarten classes and that the forecast applies an 82 percent capture rate to project future elementary cohorts.
Horner said the district has 16 active or planned housing projects totaling about 304 units across three elementary attendance areas; roughly two-thirds of those units are single-family detached, and 45 percent of the single-family detached units are in the Indian Paintbrush attendance area. She cautioned that 304 units spread over 10 years is not a large annual addition.
Overall, her summary showed a projected decline of 5.5 percent over the next five years with resident enrollment falling from the current October 1 count of 3,712 to about 3,508 and continuing to decline to 3,216 in the 10-year horizon. Horner emphasized the shorter-term years of the forecast are more reliable and that anomalies—particularly in kindergarten capture—can change projections year to year.
Trustees asked whether the trends are consistent nationally; Horner said many regions show downward birth trends but that areas with strong in-migration can show rising births because of population inflows.
Horner and staff said detailed school-attendance-area maps and matrices showing where resident students live and where they attend will be distributed in the report package for trustee review.
