Enrollment Projections May Spare Newtown An Elementary School

By Jeff White

Newtown Board of Education members reviewed evidence Tuesday night that although student population will continue to swell in the next five years, numbers might not reach the level that would make the construction of a new elementary school essential.

Board members leafed through the annual enrollment report conducted by an outside agency, Bothwell Consulting Associates of Carmel, New York, which aimed to forecast student population based on this year’s official enrollment and available number of births.

“Enrollment has continued to grow, and if anything, is growing a bit more rapidly than we had projected in 1998,” the report said.

Currently there are 4,716 students enrolled in the district. The Bothwell report forecasts that the number of students from pre-kindergarten to fifth grade will rise from its current number of 2,356 to a possible 2,824 students by the start of the 2004-2005 school year.

However the report predicts elementary school numbers will begin to decrease after the 2004-2005 school year, potentially shrinking down to 2,198. This predicted decline is also supported by state projections.

“It is estimated that the elementary population may begin a slight decline after 2004 due to the aging of the baby boomer segment of the population and a slight decline in the rate of housing increase. This decline is projected in both Bothwell’s and the State of Connecticut 1999 reports,” a memorandum co-written by board member Vincent Saviano said.

“We feel that the present K through 4 elementary school capacity is sufficient to accommodate the projected enrollment through the year 2004,” the memo continued.

The adequacy of elementary school space over the next five years does presuppose a fifth- and sixth-grade school the board hopes to have in place by the start of the 2002 school year. This school will be designed to accommodate 1,100 students, decreasing the population burden on both town elementary schools and the middle school.

But some elementary schools already have an acute overpopulation problem. Sandy Hook School has over 100 students more than any other elementary school, and school officials predict the possibility of eight kindergarten classes at the school next year. In light of this, Superintendent of Schools John Reed has already begun the process of budgeting for modular classrooms to place at Sandy Hook.

The message that came out of the school board’s discussion of the enrollment issue Tuesday night was that although numbers suggest the worst case scenario of overpopulation might not come to fruition, it would be prudent to keep options open.

Mr Saviano said this week that it is still critical for the district and town to pursue land purchase for a potential new elementary school, based on the difficulty of prediction enrollment beyond five years.

“The challenge is that the first five years are accurate because we already know the births,” Mr Saviano said. “The Board of Education adopts the practice of reviewing [enrollment data] every year, so [we’re] not surprised.”

Dr Reed added that such planning would help to address high school enrollment issues, which might inflate beyond the next five years. Looking into the potential for extensive off-campus internship programs, redeveloping a vocational-technical program and exploring an alternative high school could all help relieve high school population pressures in the coming years.

“It’s a lot like sailing a ship,” Dr Reed said of planning around enrollment projections, “you [might] have to make midcourse corrections.”