Enrollment in the Shoreline School District has been falling since 1997 and will continue to decline or stay flat through 2013, according to a study commissioned for the district.
The study was presented to the Shoreline School Board Monday, Oct. 16.
District officials will use the study, among others, to help decide if school closures would help the district regain financial balance, and if so, which schools should be closed. The district is estimated to end the 2006-07 fiscal year about $1.8 million in the red.
“This (study) will be a significant part of our future planning in terms of the number of sites we need and the number of students we’re serving,” said Sue Walker, superintendent.
The district also will study the condition of individual school buildings and other factors to help make those decisions, said Marcia Harris, deputy superintendent.
A committee of parents, community members, teacher and district officials will meet through January to come up with a recommendation on school closures. It’s also looking at whether to add sixth grade to middle schools and whether to reduce the middle school day from seven to six periods.
The enrollment study was done by William “Les” Kendrick, a consultant demographer.
It found that while Einstein Middle School and Shorewood High School have gained students since 1997, all other schools in the district have lost students.
On the low end, Brookside Elementary lost three students. On the high end, Ridgecrest Elementary lost 192.
The study also projects the growth of individual schools over the next six years.
Some elementary schools, like Brookside, Echo Lake, Parkwood and Syre elementary schools, are expected to grow.
Others, like Lake Forest Park, North City and Ridgecrest elementary schools, are expected to shrink.
All district middle and high schools will shrink in the next six years as elementary students make their way up, the study found.
Kendrick cautioned the district not to focus on specific projection numbers for schools when making decisions about boundaries and closures.
“Don’t get hung up on exact numbers,” he said. “Look at the trends. (For example:) ‘This is a school where it’s going to trend down, or trend up.’”
Enrollment is most strongly driven by population, births and new housing, Kendrick said. That’s why enrollment has been declining since 1997, and that’s why it will continue to rise again around 2013.
As for new housing, the study found that area of the district west of Interstate 5 is growing faster in single family home growth. Most houses built between 1998 and 2005 are located there.
That surprised board member Debi Ehrlichman.
“The areas we think of as affordable aren’t necessarily the areas that are growing,” she said.
More children tend to come out of single family homes than out of apartments, Kendrick said.
While 650 new housing units were built in the district in the last five years, only 150 of those were single family houses. The other 500 were apartments and condominiums.
Converting apartments to condominiums, a frequent practice in the Puget Sound area, pushes out families even more and brings in singles and retirees, Kendrick said.
There’s no consistent data that shows that skyrocketing house prices cause declining enrollment, he added.
Similarly, there’s no compelling evidence that Shoreline is losing more students to private schools, as the local private schools have seen their own enrollment decline, Kendrick said.
Enrollment is expected to start rising in the district in 2013.
“I was happy to see there’s a bottoming out,” Ehrlichman said of the downward enrollment trend. “There is an ending point. It evens out.”
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