The Park City School Board received an enrollment update in Tuesday’s meeting that shows 15 fewer students in the district compared to last year.
Park City School District Business Administrator, Todd Hauber says the enrollment variance from last year to this year is so small it’s considered flat.
“So, the main take away is that we had forecasted flat enrollment growth. So we were predicting something around 14 additional students. When the student counts came in, they were about 15 below last years counts. So, we’re in that flat enrollment period that we had anticipated. We had hoped to be on the plus side of flat but we’re on the minus side of flat. Not a big statistical difference.”
Housing developments drive their forecasts and Hauber says some of the projects they thought would bring in more students, are in a lull. Changes in enrollment will occur during the school year as families come and go.
“We’re just watching the developments in the area come into their own. Some development projects hadn’t come on in the time frames that we had thought. So, we still anticipate growth into the future. There’s still the long-term projections and the master planning that we’ve looked at to see that growth over time.”
A demographic study done a couple of years ago forecast that student enrollment would grow 10 % over the next 10 years.
“It wasn’t a straight line from today out 10 years. It ebbed and flowed according to projects as they were anticipated to come on and that’s in the developer’s hands. If they have different challenges arise and it delays their project, it delays our forecast. It doesn’t mean that it won’t happen, it just means it won’t happen the year we thought it would. So, I think we are still on the trajectory for the 10 years, it’s just not happening in the early years.”
Park City School District demographic study:
http://www.pcschools.us/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/2018_demographics_study.pdf
