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Demographer warns Sequoia Union High faces long-term enrollment decline, housing growth won't fully offset losses
Summary
King Consulting's demographer told the Sequoia Union High School District board that declining birth cohorts are the primary driver of lower future enrollment and projected the steepest impacts to arrive around 2031; planned housing would add roughly 270 students but is insufficient to reverse the trend.
Rob Murray, director of demographics at King Consulting, told the Sequoia Union High School District board that long-term declines in local birth cohorts will likely reduce the number of students entering the district's high schools over the next decade.
"The single biggest thing'is that there are way fewer kids being born and living in your school district area," Murray said, summarizing the firm's study commissioned for the 2025-26 year. He said current feeder-grade enrollments and California birth data point to a sustained decrease in the cohorts that will reach ninth grade in coming years and that 2031 is when the effect will be most visible at the high school level.
The study used local enrollment rosters, housing project addresses and U.S. Census/American Community Survey figures to model outcomes. Murray said recent and pending residential development would bring an estimated net addition of about 270 students during the projection period, but that infusion would not be large enough to offset declines tied to smaller birth cohorts.
Board members pressed Murray on details. A trustee asked whether students who live in the district but attend other districts are accounted for and whether the district receives state funding for them; staff confirmed the district does not receive attendance-based funding for students living in SUHSD boundaries who enroll elsewhere. Murray also explained how expansion of transitional kindergarten (TK) temporarily increased counts and why TK enrollment growth is separate from cohort birth trends.
The demographer recommended regular updates to projections, noting unpredictable variables such as housing patterns and migration. "You would need even more development than this to really offset that," Murray said, adding that districts typically update these studies every one to three years.
What happens next: trustees asked for additional slides and boundary-level detail; staff said the full King Consulting report is in the meeting packet and offered to provide heat-map overlays showing where developments are generating students.
