rates of increase in enrollment

[warriorpride]

What about the fact that many "active adult" communities are sprouting up around here? Older folks may want to stay in the area, but not deal with the maintenance hassles of single family home ownership. So, I think that empty nesters will gravitate to the "active adult" communities (and the developers are banking on this) , while the remaining houses will continue to produce school-age kids. I know that my wife & I have already discussed how appealing this sounds, and we're far from retirement age.

[fence]

CRH, you're right, I don't see the logic in adding 1000 kids on top of 9300. But the year over year increase, even one that is reducing in size, ultimately gets you to the nut.

I think we simply disagree about the future, beyond 2012. In my opinion, we don't have data that I am comfortable with to start predicting significant drop off in enrollment beyond 2012. I guess theoretically anything can happen, but I just can't base a vote on that, not in this area.

[soxfan]

I'm not sure if this is the correct thread for this question, but did anyone read the letter to the editor in last week's Naperville Sun written by Tom Bartos?

He stated that the need for the third high school is not that clear (at least to him) and the district needs to provide more information to clarify the justification for a YES vote.

I think his major concern was the first grade enrollment being constant over the last year or two. He went on to question whether there is a difference in a 4200 seat high school versus a 5000 seat high school.

I thought it was well written and thought provoking. Does anyone know whether or not his statements regarding the first grade enrollment are correct?

If I placed this question in the wrong area I'm sorry.

[admin]

You should give it, it's own thread in the News section.

Just open a new one for it.

[cantretirehere]

I got to thinking about my high estimate being exactly the same as the SDs low estimate. Our high estimates were different from each other's only by 700 students. Unfortunately, this is a big enough difference to have to force a decision between adding on and building a 3rd H.S. Nonetheless, when I started my number crunching I actually expected the difference to be much bigger.

I wanted to take a couple of days to mull this over and I started thinking about how my youngest son’s Junior and Senior year might be ever so slightly improved if there was a 3rd high school because in his Jr. year and Sr. years somewhat less than half of the freshman and somewhat less than half of the sophomores would be going to the new school (of course if the boundaries change between now and 2009 – and yes it could definitely happen, he could be going to the new school). Just for the record and as proof that I am capable of changing my mind, I was originally strongly against my youngest kid going to the 3rd HS, but over the last month I actually started thinking it could be nice to go to the new HS for various reasons that aren’t important here.

The mulling that I had intended to do was going to be personal as far as looking to see how my son’s HS experience would be affected during the 2009-10 and 2010-11 school years with or without a new HS. During the past couple of months I was not taking a personal view towards this whole thing. I was thinking years down the road, you know, that whole “grades 2-5 being the peak” train of thought.

Fence’s reply#33 in this thread is what got me thinking about just the next few years, those years that are affecting my son. The statement was, “But the year over year increase, even one that is reducing in size, ultimately gets you to the nut.” First I thought about the “ultimately gets you to the nut” part of the phrase. If things ever really got me to the nut, I wouldn’t have been wavering enough to do any number crunching. All my crunching wasn’t so much to firm up the NO side that I obviously belong to as much as it was to play devil’s advocate and get some discussion going more about the numbers than emotion.

Actually, the part of Fences’ statement, “But the year over year increase, even one that is reducing in size” is the one that go me thinking about just the next few years as opposed to 2012. I realized that I hadn’t been looking at this issue “year over year” or from one year to the next, but rather, from a point (2-5 grades) in the past and applying it to a point 7 years in the future.

I went back to my drawing board. Previously I had approached my old number crunching with an expectation that my numbers would be far different from the district’s. This time I approached it with an expectation that perhaps from year to year the growth has been so profuse that my numbers should actually be more in line with the district’s and I should change my vote. Could I actually be on the verge of changing my vote?

I decided to go back in time only 1 year. I wanted to see how much this year’s 9-12 grade group of kids had grown from the time they were in 8-11 grade. I figured then that if I went back and did this for a few years I could arrive at a reasonable amount of kids to add to this years 5-8 graders and I could get a picture of how many kids would be in high school in 2009 (my son’s Jr. year).

I found that since last year, when they were in 8-11 grade, the enrollment of the kids who are now in HS has actually gone down by 75 kids. At fist I thought I subtracted the wrong way because I came up with a negative number, which I totally didn't expect. But I rechecked. I was thinking, “this can’t be right” Then I went back another year. The 2004-05 group of 8-11 graders enrollment went down 72 kids from that year to the year they were in HS.

Then I had to get my excel spread sheet out and make sure I wasn’t seeing things.





The 8-11 grade classes are shrinking, not growing, by the time they get into 9-12.

[fence]

CRH, thanks for going through all of this. Its cool to see how much work people are putting into their decisions. It really shows me that people care alot on both sides and just are trying to get to answers. So thanks for showing this.

Can I just ask what made you select those grade clusters for comparison and what you are interpreting from the numbers?

I thought for a minute that it may have to do with the private HS dropoff because the numbers are so flat in the comparison of these 2 sample groups, even at the time of the most major growth spurt of this district.

But then I looked at 8th grade class size compared to the next year's 9th grade class size and the numbers go up every year, with the exception of one year in the 70s and last year the number went down by 1.

Throughout the rest of the class comparisons (Fr. - So, So-Jr.) the numbers went up and down a little but stay relatively flat, which appears to mean to me that kids are not entering our district at a late age, or at the HS level. They come in at the early grades, as is probably like most areas. People do hesitate to move their kids once they're in HS - I know my son would kill me!

Anyway, if you look at these numbers by pure grade and not cluster, the largest drop off rate is the class between 11th and 12th grade. Is there any way that this represents in some way the number of kids dropping out of HS or graduating early? It would be interesting to know why this happens even though the number is small.

That is my initial reaction....

[warriorpride]

fence said:

CRH, thanks for going through all of this. Its cool to see how much work people are putting into their decisions. It really shows me that people care alot on both sides and just are trying to get to answers. So thanks for showing this.

Can I just ask what made you select those grade clusters for comparison and what you are interpreting from the numbers?

I thought for a minute that it may have to do with the private HS dropoff because the numbers are so flat in the comparison of these 2 sample groups, even at the time of the most major growth spurt of this district.

But then I looked at 8th grade class size compared to the next year's 9th grade class size and the numbers go up every year, with the exception of one year in the 70s and last year the number went down by 1.

Throughout the rest of the class comparisons (Fr. - So, So-Jr.) the numbers went up and down a little but stay relatively flat, which appears to mean to me that kids are not entering our district at a late age, or at the HS level. They come in at the early grades, as is probably like most areas. People do hesitate to move their kids once they're in HS - I know my son would kill me!

Anyway, if you look at these numbers by pure grade and not cluster, the largest drop off rate is the class between 11th and 12th grade. Is there any way that this represents in some way the number of kids dropping out of HS or graduating early? It would be interesting to know why this happens even though the number is small.

That is my initial reaction....

My impressions:

- Looking at the 8-11 totals, there's a significant increase each year, up to this year. It cannot be denied that the HS enrollment has been growing, and is continuing to grow, significantly each year.

- I though the same thing about drop-outs.

- It's my observation that many younger, first-time buyers are moving into the new houses around here(even the more expensive ones). Many times, couples either have no kids yet, or only very young kids. So, I think that many families with HS-age kids are not moving into 204, only enough to approximately balance the ones that move out.

[wvhsparent]

I am a bit confused.... I am going to take one group from your numbers and ask a question....
Does the 04-05 8-11 group become the 05-06 9-12 group? if so then there is 425 stundent increase.
and each group also increases each year from the next........

My brain hurts.....

[fence]

wvhsparent said:

I am a bit confused.... I am going to take one group from your numbers and ask a question....
Does the 04-05 8-11 group become the 05-06 9-12 group? if so then there is 425 stundent increase.
and each group also increases each year from the next........

My brain hurts.....

Its my understanding that in the second spreadsheet, the 8-11 group is listed as the # enrolled at that level the year prior, so the comparison years are listed in the same row. So for example, last year there were 7682 students in grades 8-11 and this year there are 7607 in grades 9-12.

In the 1st spreadsheet, you'd have to drop down to the next year to find how the class grew or didn't from one year to the next.

I am still not sure statistically what this means. There's not alot of movement in these numbers historically and I kind of wouldn't expect the numbers to change in this age group.

The classes coming in are still consistently larger than the year before but there appears to be a small downshift between 11th and 12th grades year over year. In other words, the prior year's junior class seems to shrink as they enter their senior year but that's been happening since 1979...

[admin]

IMO, it shows what happens to one 4 year set of class from one year to the next. The last two 4 yr set classes lost 75 kids less than 1% of class total. It doesn't show where in this 4 yr set where the losses were from. 8th graders going to private school? Kid s dropping out? Do some kids graduate in Dec of their senior year?

[cantretirehere]

fence said:

Can I just ask what made you select those grade clusters for comparison and what you are interpreting from the numbers?

It was your “year over year” phrase that made me select those clusters. I realized I wasn’t looking at one year to the next but from 7 years ago to 7 years later. Instead of looking at how much the 2-5 grader grew from 2-5 grade to HS. I thought it might be interesting to see how the 8-11 grade group of kids grew in just one year to 9-12 grade. As far as interpreting the numbers I thought that it could give me a more accurate picture in determining what to expect for my youngest son’s Jr and Sr years, with and without a 3rd HS.

fence said:

kids are not entering our district at a late age, or at the HS level. They come in at the early grades, as is probably like most areas. People do hesitate to move their kids once they're in HS - I know my son would kill me!

I had the same thought about the growth being at the lower grade levels. And then I saw this part of your reply and it made me wonder. I guess the current figure now according to the Chicago Tribune, is that the average stay of a family in Naperville is 4 years (not sure what it is for Aurora but I think we could be reasonable in assuming that in 204 it is probably about the same). If people are moving in an out of the district and tend not to move during or near the HS years perhaps we will be witnessing more growth in the ES and MS years and not the high school years. Maybe we should be focusing on new ES and MS and not HS.

fence said:

Is there any way that this represents in some way the number of kids dropping out of HS or graduating early? It would be interesting to know why this happens even though the number is small.

I wondered about this but have no way to know what portion of the drop off is accounted for through dropouts and early graduation.

warriorpride said:

- It's my observation that many younger, first-time buyers are moving into the new houses around here(even the more expensive ones). Many times, couples either have no kids yet, or only very young kids. So, I think that many families with HS-age kids are not moving into 204, only enough to approximately balance the ones that move out.

And with the average stay being 4 years perhaps we should be looking at the ES and MS levels and not the HS levels.

fence said:

Its my understanding that in the second spreadsheet, the 8-11 group is listed as the # enrolled at that level the year prior, so the comparison years are listed in the same row. So for example, last year there were 7682 students in grades 8-11 and this year there are 7607 in grades 9-12.

In the 1st spreadsheet, you'd have to drop down to the next year to find how the class grew or didn't from one year to the next.

That is exactly right.

fence said:

In other words, the prior year's junior class seems to shrink as they enter their senior year but that's been happening since 1979...

Only consistently since 1989 though. This anomaly could just be the early grad/dropout phenom.

I have an idea but I have a cold with a pounding headache so I’m going to ask someone else to do it. (Not to mention my house is a pigsty cuz I’m spending too much time on this board). Can someone do an excel breakdown to see at what specific grades most of the growth is occurring? Might be interesting. It is probably different grades in different years but it would be cool to see, when people move into the district with school-age kids, what grade the majority of those kids are in. The excel enrollment forms are on the district web site.

[fence]

Just taking this past year, the numbers show a decrease in 1 student from 8th grade to 9th grade, a decrease in 2 students from 9th to 10th grade, a decrease in 14 from 10th grade to 11th grade and a decrease in 58 from 11th grade to 12th grade.

It looks like historically there are kids being lost from 11th grade to 12th grade mainly, and this shows up in most years of this data. One could surmise that this has something to do with early graduation and/or drop-out since it happens btwn. 11th and 12th grade.

There is still a significant increase in overall size of each class from one year to the next which supports the overall enrollment projections.

ETA: This was in response to Topher's post.

[rew]

I believe enrollment numbers are from May of that school year, so that they would reflect kids added into the classes. So I would expect that 12th grade would reflect early graduation students.

[rew]

I did a quick and dirty hand calc of 7-10 vs the next yr's 8-11...

yr / 7-10 / next yrs 8-11

99-00 / 5704 / 5725
00-01 / 6164 / 6241
01-02 / 6627 / 6671
02-03 / 7162 / 7182
03-04 / 7677 / 7632
04-05 / 8098 / 8091

[fence]

rew said:

I believe enrollment numbers are from May of that school year, so that they would reflect kids added into the classes. So I would expect that 12th grade would reflect early graduation students.

What about the students that attend Indian Plains? I don't think they're counted in our HS enrollment numbers, are they? It doesn't look that way from this year's total.....