Student increase expected
Study projects enrollment of 262 more children for Pottsgrove School District over next 10 years
LOWER POTTSGROVE >> Student enrollments in the Pottsgrove School District could rise anywhere from below 1 percent all the way up to 14 percent by 2026, according to a forecast presented recently to the school board.
That means anywhere from 25 to 3,700 more students in the next 10 years.
However, the scenario the consultant hired by the board in November considers the most likely is an 8-percent increase in the next 10 years, which works out to 262 additional children.
Currently, Pottsgrove has about 3,265 students and an 8 percent increase would put the total student population at 3,527 in the 2026-2027 school year, according to the demographic study unveiled at the Feb. 28 school board meeting.
Tracy Healy, president of Ohiobased Future-Think, explained her study to the board via speakerphone, saying several factors went
“If things come in on the high end of that estimate, we’re going to face some real challenges.” David Nester, Pottsgrove Business Manager
into the forecast, including birth rates, historical data and approved developments in the district’s three townships.
She said over the last 10 years, the district saw a 3-percent enrollment increase, but it has slowed recently and in the last five years, only increased by 1 percent.
In fact many of the variables were, well, varied.
For example, K-2 enrollments peaked this year at 763, whereas enrollment in grades 6-9 peaked in 2007 at 785.
By contrast, births hit an all-time low in 2014 at 237 whereas the rate in 2011, which is this year’s kindergarten, was 260.
Healy said given so many variables, including whether approved developments will ever be built, that forecasting enrollments is “as much an art as a science.”
Of course one of the most significant factors in projecting enrollments is additional housing units.
The three of consequence in Healy’s study included the 503-unit Sanatoga Green, the 178-unit Spring Valley Farms, both in Lower Pottsgrove, and the 58-unit development off Moyer Road in Upper Pottsgrove.
But not all housing is created equally.
Because 171 of the Sanatoga Green units will be studio and one-bedroom apartments — whereas all 178 Spring Valley Farms units are single-family homes with three or four bedrooms — Sanatoga Green may generate as few as 126 school-age children, Healy said.
But that is still more than double the 58 students the developers of Sanatoga Green had forecast and more than the 118 the school district had put forward as a low-estimate, basing their forecast on the ratio of children who live in the Coddington View housing project in Upper Pottsgrove.
Healy said she had taken the developers’ forecasts into account when she made her own.
It was the fact that the Montgomery County Planning Commission has confirmed the Sanatoga Green developers’ enrollment estimates that ultimately convinced the school board to choose Future-Think over the county planners to do the demographic study, even though the county was less expensive.
Having already expressed their doubts about the Sanatoga Green developers’ forecast for Sanatoga Green, the board voted immediately for the administration “to get these figures to the Lower Pottsgrove Commissioners as fast as possible,” as board member Rick Rabinowitz put it.
Looking at the enrollment hikes by grade, the study predicted the biggest increases would be at Pottsgrove High School, where a $28 million renovation and expansion project was just completed.
The enrollment study shows an additional 151 students in grades 9-12.
At Pottsgrove Middle School, about 58 more students would be enrolled ten years from now and at Lower Pottsgrove Elementary School, about 40 more students.
Grades K-2 would only see about 13 more students divided among the Ringing Rocks and West Pottsgrove buildings.
“The real pinch points are going to be Lower Pottsgrove and the middle school in about four to six years,” said Business Manager David Nester.
Rabinowitz noted that “we are slammed at the very least right now at Lower Pottsgrove Elementary and the middle school” and questioned whether they could handle more students.
“We’ve talked about enclosing the portico to make more classrooms at Lower Pottsgrove, but I have to wonder whether the infrastructure can handle it,” he said. “For example, can we get everyone through the lunch line in a reasonable about of time?”
The increases are not projected to begin for another three to four years, “so we have some time to plan,” Nester said.
Superintendent William Shirk said he would like to see the administration have a plan of action put together “by the start of the next school year.”
Nester said that plan could be anything from new construction, to temporary classrooms or even redistricting.
However, re-distributing students among the elementary schools — even though West Pottsgrove is currently below capacity and is renting space to the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit — has been made more difficult by the district’s decision five years ago to create “grade centers.”
Since both West Pottsgrove and Ringing Rocks are K-2 centers, they cannot take any of the third, fourth or fifth graders packed into Lower Pottsgrove Elementary.
As the administration gears up for the possible changes, Nester indicated he believes the district can accommodate the increase if it is on the low or medium range that Healy forecast.
“If things come in on the high end of that estimate, we’re going to face some real challenges,” he said.