Ridgefield school enrollment: The beginnings of a cycle of decline?

Written by Kate Czaplinski, Press Staff
Tuesday, 03 November 2009 05:54

Faced with projections indicating that Ridgefield Public Schools’ enrollment may drop 26.3% — by 1,421 students — in the next ten years, the Board of Education discussed the reliability of the numbers and how they may impact school reconfiguration plans.

Demographer Dr. Hyung C. Chung, president of H.C. Planning Consultants Inc. of Orange, compiled a draft of Ridgefield’s 10-year enrollment projections using a number of statistical methods, based on birth rates, the economy, home sales, nonpublic school enrollment, new construction and unemployment.

He presented the report at the Oct. 26 Board of Education meeting.

He broke the 10 years up into blocks of five years.

“Nobody can really tell what will be in the future, we cannot predict the future but we can look at the past and how accurate we’ve been,” Dr. Chung said.

He admitted the numbers from 2014-2019 were difficult to predict.

“Up to year 2014 the trend is reasonably accurate,” Dr. Chung said. “2014-2019 is based on those five previous forecasted years.”

From 2009 to 2014, Dr. Chung forecasts student enrollment will drop by 446 students in the K-5, 155 student in grades 6-8, and a two-student drop in grades 9 through 12. From 2014-19 K-5 drops another 390, grades 6-8 will drop 234, and 9-12 will drop by 194.

Dr. Chung prepared predictions for the school board in 1999 and in 2001, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. He analyzed the accuracy of past predictions. For example, predictions he made in 2001 for total K-5 school enrollment in 2009 overestimated the enrollment by about 13.2%. He had predicted 2,598 children for 2009 and the actual enrollment this year is 2,295.

His predictions for 2009 in the subsequent years are more accurate. He was off by about 0.5% in his forecasts made in 2005 and 2007. He overestimated the 2009 K-5 enrollment by 0.6% in 2008.

Board member Kathy McGerald said later during the meeting she was impressed in how accurate Dr. Chung has been in his forecasts in the last few years. Fellow Board member Paul Sutherland said his being off by 13% in 2001 was an important fact to take into consideration — backing up Dr. Chung’s assessment that looking farther ahead than five years is more difficult.

Board member Richard Steinhart said that even the more reliable five-year projections may have a great deal of impact on the school system.

“Those enrollment projections are sobering, even only looking at the first five years,” Mr. Steinhart said.

According to the numbers, Ridgefield school enrollment peaked in 2000 at 5,540 and have steadily declined since. Total enrollment this year is 5,400.

In Dr. Chung’s report, the number of births is closely related to the economy; birth rates dropped in the 1930s and mid-1970’s when the economy suffered, he said. One chart showed an obvious correlation between the state unemployment rate going up and the state birth rate going down.

“It’s what you would call a mirror image of the mountain reflected in the water,” Dr. Chung said.

He noted that Ridgefield’s demographics and history also play a part in the town’s numbers, making it different from the state statistics.

For his report he made modest forecasts of the economy improving.

“I’ve made some assumptions of how the economy will be in the future and that’s a grave thing to do — most don’t know what will happen next month,” Dr. Chung said.

A brief question and answer period from the audience asked specifically if new housing developments or an increase of dual family incomes were put into the projections.

Dr. Chung said he was not asked to specifically study those factors but gave some statistical information on how a new housing development, like one on Bennett’s Pond property, could impact schools.

“The impact of one family takes a long time,” Dr. Chung said. “People think it will have an immediate impact but statistically if 160 single-family units are built, immediately some are vacant, some have an older population, some very young, and some middle age. On average that is a very small number of kids in the school system right away.”

“By the time you forget you built those units 12 years later, you’ll have a lot of kids coming from there,” he added.

Board member John Palermo asked whether residents migrating to town from more expensive counties like Westchester was considered. Dr. Chung said he provides for some level of child migration but homes sales are down everywhere so the assumption is people aren’t moving as much.

Irene Burgess, a candidate for the Board of Education, was in the audience and asked whether the report takes into consideration that older citizens may be leaving Ridgefield and selling their homes to new families. Dr. Chung said that was not part of the study.

Mr. Steinhart said the draft study conclusion shows the school system has more years ahead of declining enrollment.

“This indicates we’re early in the cycle of decline,” he said.