Managing School District Growth: The Tools You Need

The race is on to manage growth for many school districts, as the populations of cities and towns across the Northwest continue to rise. In just the past 30 days, more than 10 school districts in Oregon and Washington have been featured in news stories about their intentions to acquire the funding needed to update boundaries and address current or expected school capacity issues.

Beyond trying to get funding, how should school districts manage growth?  Here are three tools school districts can use to better understand where and when growth will occur, what schools will be affected, and confidently plan for the future.

Student Enrollment Forecasting

These forecasts use enrollment assessments and land use analyses to create an accurate picture of how many students are expected at each school over time.

• Enrollment Assessments. School districts can plan with confidence when they understand their district’s historic enrollment trends, past projections, school capacities, student generation rates, and demographic and socioeconomic characteristics.
• Land Use Analyses. It’s easy to make better decisions when a district can see where new residential growth will likely occur, and how it will affect future patterns of student enrollment at each school.

School Siting

We can identify how land use trends will affect the future distribution of students in a district, and provide a ranked list of potential properties to make siting future schools easy and efficient.

Boundary Updates

If a district is building new schools or needs to balance enrollment between existing schools, they will need a boundary update. With our innovative mapping tools and consensus-based approach, we can help districts can successfully redraw district boundaries based on community input and accurate data.

Click here to learn more about how we can help school districts manage growth.