Officials leading a facilities‑planning session for ALBERT LEA PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT said demographic data and enrollment records point to several years of lower student counts that will shape facility and program choices.

At the meeting, a district presenter walked the group through birth‑cohort correlations and enrollment projections, noting that "In 2013, there was 339 students or children born in our county" and that, using recent averages, "we're probably gonna have about 100 less" students enroll five years after a birth cohort. The district described two projection methods — a simple linear approach and a weighted model used by a vendor referenced as "Eller" — that produce similar downward trends in incoming kindergarten class sizes.

The presenter said the district sees larger senior classes but smaller incoming kindergarten cohorts and warned administrators that a demographic "bubble" that might ease enrollment pressure around 2030 is years away. "We can't cut for 7, 8 years," the presenter said, and urged planning now for a period of constrained enrollment and budgets.

District staff also presented open‑enrollment data showing students leaving for nearby districts and online options. The district collected reasons families give on transfer forms, grouped as "smaller districts or smaller class sizes," family or work connections, location/transportation, homeschool or online options, educational opportunities, and personal preference. The presenter reported 33 open‑enroll‑in students to date for the year and said prior years showed a net outflow in the low hundreds, with staff recalling figures "somewhere in that" 300–350 range that will be verified when the data are finalized.

Special‑education costs were a central financial concern. The presenter said many districts receive less state aid for special education than services cost and must use general‑fund dollars to subsidize programming. The district noted a high special‑education student count relative to total enrollment and asked planners to keep program needs in mind when considering how to use or consolidate buildings.

What happens next: district staff said they will verify open‑enrollment and net‑loss figures, incorporate special‑education program distribution into facility analyses, and return with further data. The facilitator asked committee members to review the comparator district materials and said the group will reconvene after community input is collected to refine facility recommendations.