Consultant presents draft school-enrollment projection showing 426-student increase over 10 years

TischlerBise, a planning and demographic consulting firm, presented a preliminary student-enrollment and school-needs study to the Isle of Wight County School Board on Aug. 7, 2025, at Westside Elementary School. The draft report projects a net increase of about 426 public-school students across the division over the next 10 years and includes student-generation rates and guidance on future school sizes and site acreage.

The presentation focused on three objectives, Michael Gillooly, an analyst on the project, told the board: student enrollment projections, student generation rates by housing type and grade, and school-siting guidance. TischlerBise calculated student-generation rates using subdivision-level student counts provided by the district and county address-point housing data. The firm reported student-generation rates of 0.31 students per single-family housing unit, 0.191 per multifamily unit, and 0.392 per mobile home in the subdivisions analyzed.

The study used American Community Survey (ACS) age-cohort counts and Weldon Cooper Center population growth rates as inputs…