District 196 Enrollment Expected To Slowly Decline Over Next Five Years

District 196's student enrollment is projected to slowly decline over the next five years.

Kim Reis, student information supervisor for District 196, explained the decline in enrollment to the school board Monday night.

The total amount of students expected in District 196 for Oct. 1, 2011 is 27,430, which is a decrease of .09 percent or 24 students. The elementary schools are projected to lose 45 students, the middle schools will add 94 students and the high schools will lose 25 students.

This year's enrollment has 27,454 students, and in the 2015-16 school year, a projected 27,101 students will remain in the district.

"We will have a stable enrollment over the next five years," District 196 Communications Specialist Tony Taschner said.

"We will expect to see that small decline over the next several years," Reis said.

Taschner said the enrollment declining isn't necessarily a bad thing for the district. It won't receive any extra funding for additional students, however, it won't face rapid growth either, which means dealing with facility issues.

"We had the facility issues when the district was growing in the late 70s, 80s and 90s. Eagan was the fastest growing city in the state," Taschner said. 

That won't be the case in the coming years, Taschner said.

The impact is not greatly negative or positive, but what the districts really need to pay attention to is how many children living in the district attend a school in that district, according to Taschner.

Last year, the district had 88 percent of children living there attending one of its schools.

Reis said the district has been decreasing enrollment by 200 students a year since the 2003-04 school year. However, this year the district's enrollment increased by seven students.

"We need to have things turn around and people to start building houses." Reis said. "We know where our new growth is going to happen; the question is when?"

There are two methods that Reis and her department do to determine enrollment projections. First, there is the census method, where Reis looks at the amount of children who currently live in the district and the new developments that are being built. The district is split into 130 census areas and each one is assigned to an elementary, middle and high school.

"There is a standard loss we expect each year from people moving in and people moving out [of the district]," Reis said.

The next method Reis looks into is the Cohort Survival Method, which peers into the past enrollment and tracks the students as they move from one grade to the next. This method looks to see how many students remain from year to year and it projects that forward.

We like using both methods because it gives us the opportunity to cross-check one method against the other, Reis said.

"They're so different in their philosophy and how they look at enrollment, and it's always reassuring when they come out similar," Reis said.

According to Reis, the census method tends to come out more conservative, and her department takes that into consideration when moving forward with the enrollment projections.

The Enrollment Projections Committee is also involved. The committee was founded in 2005 and consists of four principals (two from elementary schools and one from a middle and high school). The committee reviews the assumptions and results in each of the models, as well as make recommendations to the cabinet and school board.