Consultant warns of modest enrollment declines over five years; district to weigh responses

Sarah Kemp of the Applied Population Lab presented the Monona Grove School Board with enrollment trends and four projection models on Tuesday night, telling the board the district is likely to see a modest decline in total enrollment over the next five years.

Kemp, who said she has provided enrollment projections for school districts for more than two decades, told the board the district’s total enrollment grew about 3% over the past 10 years but that kindergarten cohorts and births have trended downward recently. “That birth trend has been declining over the last 18 years,” she said, and the shortfall of younger cohorts will drive declines at the elementary level.

Why it matters: the projections affect staffing, classroom assignments and long-term facility planning. Kemp presented four models — baseline (10-year averages), 5-year, 3-year and a model that projects kindergarten trends without birth rates — and said the most reliable horizon is the first five years. Across the models she projected a total district decline of roughly 2% to 5.5% in five years (a loss of about 62 to 172 students), with elementary schools experiencing the largest percentage drops and the high school continuing to grow (roughly 12–47 additional students in some scenarios).

Board members pressed on causes and possible district responses. Eric asked whether the falling cohorts are the result of people having fewer children; Kemp replied that the pattern reflects national and state trends and that “people are having fewer children or even opting out of having children at all,” noting pandemic-era shifts and delayed childbearing as contributing factors. When asked about district responses — for example, expanding 4K programs or adjusting attendance boundaries — Kemp said such strategies can help attract students but cautioned that they cannot fully offset demographic decline: “if they’re just not there, they’re not there.”

Kemp also reviewed model reliability: projections are generally within a 1–3% error rate in the first three years, she said, while 6–10 year forecasts become less reliable because they rely on projected births rather than observed births.

The presentation included school-level breakout tables and percentages. Kemp said Granite Ridge, Winnequah and Cottage Grove elementary schools show varying projected declines across the four models (averaging, across models, roughly mid-teens for some elementary sites), while middle school grades are forecast to be steady to slightly higher.

What’s next: the board will use the report to inform upcoming decisions about open enrollment seats, facility planning and staffing. Kemp encouraged the board to treat five-year forecasts as planning guidance, not precise counts, and offered to return with follow-up analysis if the board requests boundary or program scenarios.