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A potential 12 to 12.5 percent drop in enrollment in District 113 schools by 2020 was projected at the district's last board of education meeting on Jan. 23.
Jean Sogin, market research study group member and former city planner who did demographic projections for District 12 in the '90s, looked at both U.S. and area births to project enrollment eight years from now based on this year’s class of kindergarten students.
“This is what we call a ‘survival rate,’” Sogin said. A student’s “survival” is defined as the period from kindergarten to their freshman year of high school.
Sogin’s projections saw an eight percent decline at Highland Park High School from 2011’s rate to a projected rate in 2020. She anticipates a 17 percent decline at Deerfield High School.
However, Sogin’s partner in this project, Jean Karp, was quick to mention that these projections are just that – projections. There’s no way to know for sure how accurate they will be until 2020.
“The further you go off into the future, the more likely you are to be wrong,” Karp said.
Sogin also said that the housing market is a factor in future enrollment, as it can lead to more young families moving into the district, or prevent them from doing so. On this front, Sogin was optimistic.
“Single-family houses are selling again,” she said. “I’m very encouraged that we are going to see more properties sell. There are definitely sales picking up. There are just so many variables to consider when making these kinds of projections. “
The class of 2023 are today’s first-graders, said Sogin.
“Thinking 8 to 10 years forward, most of the children in the district are already in the system and there’s no reason to assume they’ll leave.”
In other business, the district’s market research survey closed.
The district got the number of responses back that they were hoping for, with around 2,000 completed over all. The market research committee will be analyzing data and reporting back soon.
Read more: Ed Brill's editorial about the survey and Superintendent George Fornero's letter about it.
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Nancy S. Karp
12:52 pm on Friday, February 10, 2012
Lot's of errors in the article. For starters, the demographer is Jean Sogin. The other person who spoke at the meeting is a local real estate agent and former market researcher, Nancy Karp (me). The quotes you have are all mixed up between what Jean said and what I said.
The estimates that Jean provided at the meeting do not take into account that we are in a very unusual situation. Jean reported the facts: current enrollment levels at the grade schools, and how many of those students will still be here when they are high school age. The other part of the conversations is that we have had unusually low number of home sales in the past several years and we also have a high number of empty nesters still in their homes. As the real estate market picks up again (by the way, the past couple of months, especially the last few weeks have been VERY busy with lots of buyers out there) these homes that have no school age children will once again be populated with growing families. In the past, people moved here before their children started school...with the economy and other factors, I believe that these people will still be moving here, but maybe at least one of their children will already be in grade school when they move.
Jean also presented national census data. If you look at that data, there is no reason to believe that enrollment will be down. Birth rates show that there could be similar number of school age children in 20 years as we have in our system today.
Jacob Nelson
1:01 pm on Friday, February 10, 2012
Thanks for commenting Nancy, and apologies on our end for the errors. I appreciate you shedding additional light on a topic that I'm sure is concerning for many residents.
Just out of curiosity, what leads you to believe people will begin moving when their children are in grade school rather than moving earlier? Is that a trend you've already begun noticing?
Thanks again,
Jacob
Fed up Tax Payer
12:02 am on Sunday, April 1, 2012
If the Three Stooges in Springfield get their way, i.e. making the school districts responsibel for funding their teachers pensions, the projection is a 14 to 20% increase in property taxes. That type of increase will make it even harder for young couple to qualify for loans and those who would like to sell and "get out of dodge" will be stuck in place. Thus, you will not see families with school age children replacing the empty nesters. Solution, deal cut out the cancer befor it grows and deal with the pension problem. Convert all teachers to 401Ks. End bumping of salaries and maybe consider merging the two schools into one.
John
11:54 am on Tuesday, April 9, 2013
More people will leave the state if illinois over the next 5 years including our area. Taxes and cost of living only continues to go higher. We are no longer living in the 1990's when living in this area was an advantage. Plenty of good schools and lower cost of living in other states.