Where Should We Build? Geographic Enrollment Forecasting for a Capital Facility Plan

Client: Burlington-Edison Public Schools

Location: Skagit County, Washington

The Burlington-Edison School District was in the process of updating their Capital Facility Plan when they reached out to FLO Analytics for a new student enrollment forecast. The district needed help answering pressing questions, like:

• How will district enrollment change in six years vs ten years?
• How do forecasts compare for elementary, middle, and high schoolers, and what schools will they attend?
• For any given school, where in the district are students travelling from?

A traditional enrollment forecast—an estimate of total enrollment for the district—wouldn’t provide the answers they needed, but our specialized geographic approach to student enrollment forecasting could.

We went beyond a traditional enrollment forecast to do a location-based assessment of present and future student population patterns. That allowed Burlington-Edison to know where in the district their students will be living in the future. By applying geographic and data analysis tools, our student enrollment forecasts provided insight into the geographic distribution of students. The district could then easily see what attendance areas were projected to grow, and make critical decisions regarding future building infrastructure and classroom resources.