State demographer: Wayzata enrollment growth to slow; high school could add about 1,000 students over 10 years

Hazel Reinhart, state demographer, told the Wayzata Public Schools Board of Education at a May 27 work session that long-term trends — lower fertility, fewer births and different housing types — mean the district’s rapid enrollment growth is likely to slow even as some grades, especially high school, could continue to expand in the next decade.

Reinhart said Minnesota’s total fertility rate was 1.73 in 2023 (replacement is 2.11; the U.S. rate was about 1.62), and that decline in births is already feeding through to smaller kindergarten cohorts. “We now have born the children who will be kindergarteners in 2029–30,” she told board members, noting the size of that birth pool has decreased and therefore the district’s kindergarten “capture rate” would need to rise meaningfully to sustain past growth.

The projections matter because they change the district’s planning horizon. Reinhart used a cohort-survival method and two capture-rate assumptions (a recent low and a higher scenario) and said the result is slower districtwide growth over the next 10 years than Wayzata saw in the prior decade. At the same time, she cautioned that different net migration assumptions change the mix: “The high migration assumption produces much more high school growth” and, speaking of potential…