First, the good news.
Unlike early this summer, the Northshore School District is not considering closing any of its buildings at this time, according to Superintendent Larry Francois.
What could be considered the bad news is that if the district’s demographics play out as currently projected, the schools will have to make some moves regarding its buildings at some point. The future configuration of the district all depends on future enrollment, which was the topic of the day during Francois’ second “Brown Bag Briefing” held Oct. 15.
“The kids may be where the schools aren’t,” Francois said in closing the forum, which attracted about 40 people to the district administration building.
Demographic consultant W. Les Kendrick presided over most of the session, with an array of graphs and charts that basically showed Northshore’s student population as growing annually up until about 1998. For several years after that, enrollment largely flattened. It began declining in 2006 even though the local population continued to grow, even if at a slower rate than in the past.
“The first part of the story is, you are not alone,” Kendrick said, adding enrollment in districts around the Puget Sound area have followed largely the same trends.
According to Kendrick, there are a couple of key reasons for what is happening. He said some of the growth seen in King County in the early 1990s has migrated to surrounding counties, but he later added that migration to the entire Puget Sound area has dropped.
Possibly more importantly in regard to enrollments, birth rates have fallen across the area. Obviously, fewer births means fewer kids heading to school. Finally, new housing starts have slumped across the northwest.
Taking a moment to address the current financial and housing problems faced by the entire country, Kendrick described that meltdown as a “wildcard” that ultimately could throw projections in a different direction. He said people have underestimated the severity of the housing problems in the past.
Returning to more local trends, Kendrick said the north and central areas of the district continue to see some new housing starts while new housing is becoming more and more rare in the southern and eastern portions. There also seems to be less turnover of existing homes in those latter areas. The result is, probably predictably, that schools in the southern and eastern ends of the district have suffered the worst drops in enrollment.
For example, Frank Love Elementary School lost some 128 students before district officials revamped school boundaries in October of last year. Love still dropped some 37 students this year.
Looking toward the future, the enrollment numbers should remain fairly stable over the next few years, according to Kendrick’s projections. But one of his charts also shows a steady increase in the birth rates in both King and Snohomish counties, increases that eventually should swell the numbers of students in local classrooms.
Overall, taking into account housing trends and birth rates, Kendrick came up with projections that show local enrollments, in the most conservative scenario, dropping slightly over the next few years, then rising slightly by 2013. His highest projections show enrollment remaining fairly stable until 2010, when the numbers start to jump, rising to over 20,500 by 2013 from the current levels of about 19,500.
In the end, even Kendrick’s most conservative numbers show enrollment increasing from anywhere between roughly 20,500 and 22,500 by 2020. But if enrollment eventually is going to rise, why even consider closing schools? Kendrick said the answer is that districts have to balance their budgets from year to year.
In addition to possibly leading to adjustments in school boundaries, Francois added later that enrollment obviously affects the district’s bottom line.
“Our funding as a school district is driven by kids,” Francois said.
