Enrollment forecast: RSP projects about 340 new students in five years; ESAs and housing shape planning

Jenna Wallace of RSP told the North Polk Community School District board that the firm’s five-year enrollment forecast projects the district “increasing by about 340 students,” with approximately 150 more elementary students and 150 more high-school students, and relative stability in middle grades.

The presentation, which relied on district, city, county and census data, outlined the model’s main inputs: live-birth trends, grade-to-grade progression, in- and out-migration, and open-enrollment patterns. Wallace said the model breaks the district into granular planning areas so officials can see where new housing will most affect capacity. She described single-family yield rates of roughly 54–55 students per 100 units and lower yield rates for multifamily construction.

Wallace singled out the state’s Education Savings Account (ESA) program as a new variable the district will monitor. She noted an increase in ESA-using students reported by the state (from 14 to 67 in recent reporting) but cautioned RSP cannot track individual student IDs from the state data. “What we can get a sense of is more so as this has been phased in year to year,” Wallace said, adding that many of those ESA recipients appear to be private-school students newly using ESA dollars rather than large numbers leaving the district.

Board members pressed the firm on accuracy after one member (Speaker 18) raised discrepancies between earlier projections and actual counts: “In the 2023–24 school year you projected us to be 93; we were actually 76,” Speaker 18 said, asking whether the forecast error was an anomaly. Wallace said RSP’s one-year accuracy generally falls near the high 90s and identified slowed housing construction and the ESA rollout as likely contributors to past variance. She agreed to provide the board with more detailed accuracy statistics and to correct an error noted on page 22 of the report before public release.

On building-level capacity, Wallace pointed the board to the report’s utilization table (slide 39). She said most buildings remain within an acceptable utilization range over the five-year window but that North Polk Central’s boundary could approach the district’s high end of utilization if projected development materializes.

Next steps Wallace recommended include using the report as a data foundation for facilities planning and meeting with municipalities to align boundaries and infrastructure assumptions. The board said it will post the document for public viewing and use the forecast in upcoming planning conversations.

Provenance: topicintro SEG 347, topfinish SEG 1130.