Demographer: Royse City ISD high school enrollment trailing bond-era forecasts as kindergarten cohorts shrink

Rodney “Rocky” Gardner of Zonda Demographics told the Royse City ISD board their updated forecast shows high school enrollment below the projection used for the 2023 bond — “we thought by this time we'd have well over 3,000 students… right now we're looking at just under 3,000 students.”

Gardner said kindergarten cohort sizes are smaller, and because kindergarten cohorts drive long-term high-school totals, the effect will compound over time. He attributed much of the loss to school choice and virtual enrollment: statewide, charter and virtual campuses have absorbed thousands of students, and Gardner said brick-and-mortar secondary yields are down.

He also walked trustees through housing-start metrics: new-home starts in the local market have fallen significantly since 2022, and builder closings dropped from about 1,600 to roughly 800 in the recent period. Lower starts plus falling per-home student yields (he cited yields that fell from around 1.5 students per home to near 0.4 in some cohorts) explain why more houses do not automatically convert to more students for the ISD.

Gardner recommended producing a mobility report that will show where leavers live and whether many remain inside district boundaries but attend non-district options; he predicted a large share of leavers likely still reside in the district.

The presentation framed a key operational challenge for the ISD: even with continued housing growth, the district cannot assume previous student-per-home relationships will return without demographic or policy changes.