Consultants tell New Caney ISD to plan for tens of thousands of new homes; district could need multiple new schools

Consultants from Casa Demographics presented a demographic and housing study to the New Caney Independent School District Board of Trustees on March 17, 2025, projecting 18,482 new housing occupancies in the district over the next 10 years and forecasting several thousand additional students that will strain current capacity.

The report matters because the projected growth would require the district to add multiple elementary and middle schools, plan for relief at high school attendance zones and deploy portables in the near term while longer-term facilities are sited and built.

Chris Poole, a planner with Casa Demographics, told the board the firm updated census, Texas Education Agency and local appraisal-district data and geocoded current students to generate district- and planning-unit-level projections. "You guys have gained about 3,600 students between the fall of 18 and the fall of 23," Poole said, underscoring recent growth trends the study used as a baseline.

Caroline Couch, the demographer on the team, summarized the housing forecast: "We project 18,482 new occupancies over the 10-year projection period." The consultants said roughly 60% of that new housing is expected to be traditional single-family, a little more than 28% multifamily, and nearly 3% manufactured housing.

The study uses planning units tied to attendance zones and geocoded student addresses to estimate how many students each new home type will generate. Casa reported the district’s average number of students per occupied single-family home as 0.58 and the multifamily average as 0.22 students per occupied unit. The consultants noted those ratios vary widely by subdivision and by product type; the district includes 14 subdivisions with fewer than 0.1 students per occupied single-family home and 27 subdivisions with more than one student per home.

Growth is projected to be concentrated in the northwest portion of New Caney ISD. The Highlands, Tavola West (Lennar), Maple Heights and several large tracts described in the presentation as ORIS tracts and the Guniganti tract were identified as the primary places likely to generate the most new homes. Casa said active single-family developments will add roughly 5,900 homes in the projection period and another approximately 6,300 homes are in planning stages.

The consultants translated housing occupancies into student projections under low, moderate and high-growth scenarios. They told the board the district’s current enrollment is roughly 19,420 students and that, over the projection period, the district could add about 5,000 elementary students — implying the need for roughly four or five additional elementary campuses (based on ~900-student elementary capacity). Middle-school growth could require one-and-a-half to two additional campuses; at the high-school level, consultants said Porter High School may need relief during the projection period.

Casa’s maps flagged planning units that would exceed capacity thresholds, and the consultants said many campuses likely will need portable classrooms in the nearer term. Poole said districts commonly use a 20% capacity trigger as a planning threshold where portable and long‑term solutions must be developed.

The presentation also addressed non-resident choices and risk factors. Casa studies private, charter and virtual options and said charter openings can affect enrollment locally; their analysis estimated a possible loss of about 60 students to alternative educational opportunities over five years. The consultants noted voucher legislation or sudden charter openings would require revisiting the projections.

The firm described other inputs: birth-rate data by ZIP code (moved forward five years to estimate kindergarten cohorts), student-cohort aging, and differentiated student-per-home ratios by subdivision and product type. Poole said geocoding current students makes most near-term enrollment predictable because "most of the kids you're gonna have next year, you've already got today." The consultants provided large-format maps and said the full report and data tables will be posted on the district’s bond page.

Board members asked no substantive follow-up questions after the presentation; the consultant team opened the floor to questions at the end of the briefing.

The district will use the study results for facility planning, bond discussions and staffing models in the coming months. Casa Demographics and the consultants advised regular updates as housing markets and state policy (charter/voucher changes) evolve.