Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Enrollment topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Zonda demographer: Pflugerville ISD enrollment likely to grow as multifamily building lifts student counts
Summary
Paul Cash of Zonda told the Pflugerville ISD board Dec. 5 that multifamily construction and more than 10,000 future lots could raise enrollment from the mid-25,000s toward roughly 27,000 over a decade, putting several elementary campuses at or over capacity under the district’s forecasts.
Paul Cash, a demographer with Zonda Education, told the Pflugerville Independent School District board at its Dec. 5 work session that ongoing multifamily construction and thousands of future single-family lots are likely to push district enrollment higher over the next decade.
Cash said the district currently has about 6,102 students living in multifamily housing — roughly 24% of total enrollment — and that local building activity includes 24 active subdivisions, 21 future subdivisions and more than 10,000 future lots. He presented two projection scenarios: a conservative forecast that keeps enrollment near the mid-25,000s and a higher forecast that would raise enrollment to about 25,700 within five years and just over 27,000 in roughly a decade.
Why it matters: those higher scenarios, Cash warned, would drive several campuses past capacity. Under the low projection he identified Mott Elementary as the first elementary likely to exceed capacity (around the 2030–31 school-year horizon), followed by Carpenter; at the secondary level he said Bowles and WIS would shift in their capacity timelines.
Cash illustrated student yields at the subdivision level to show how housing type affects school enrollment. He said Greenwood Subdivision currently has a low student yield (about 0.173 students per occupied home) that Zonda expects to rise toward roughly 0.5 as the development matures. By contrast, he noted the Liso subdivision had a 0.488 yield in recent closings — nearly five students for every 10 occupied homes.
Cash also flagged trends in the multifamily market: about 6,900 multifamily units are under construction and another ~6,000 are planned across the district’s elementary zones; he said manufactured housing developments historically have higher student yields than apartments, which typically show lower yields.
Trustees pressed for district-specific occupancy data and for a clearer breakdown of where newcomers are coming from. Trustee Mayer asked Cash to provide occupancy and yield figures focused specifically on Pflugerville and adjoining extraterritorial jurisdictions; Cash said staff could supply that. Trustee Mott raised the district’s teacher-housing proposal and asked trustees to consider how local occupancy trends should factor into future boundary decisions and facility needs.
Cash recommended that the board plan for both low- and high-growth scenarios and use updated enrollment counts next year to determine which forecast is tracking. He said charter-school movement appeared to be easing some prior enrollment losses but that the district’s local recruitment efforts have also helped reverse recent declines.
The board did not take any formal action during the presentation; trustees asked staff to return more detailed occupancy and yield data for district planning.
