Ross Haber (demographer) presented a status update on the district's enrollment projections, attendance-zone study and facilities-feasibility work, saying the firm has completed visits to 13 buildings and the cohort-based projections and is on track to deliver a final report in December.

Haber said the district's enrollment declined from about 14,712 in 2011 to roughly 11,499 in the current year and that the elementary grades have declined the least in recent years. "Beginning in about 2024, we're starting to see a leveling out of enrollment in the district," Haber said, and he cautioned that the October 15 state enrollment file will be used to finalize numbers.

The study will combine cohort projections with an analysis of new housing and a room-by-room instructional-space inventory, and it will produce school-by-school utilization tables. Haber said the firm will apply the board's target class-size numbers to estimate how many instructional spaces each school requires and will model feasibility for attendance-zone changes and, if warranted, building closures. He repeatedly emphasized he was presenting process and preliminary data, not final recommendations.

Why it matters: board members and several parents at the meeting said class sizes in some elementary classrooms are already high (several parents said they had classes of 26'28 students) and asked the demographer to run multiple scenarios. "We want...tables at target class size and also a second table 2 down from target," said the board, which voted to request two additional scenarios.

Haber described how the firm geocodes students by address (using student IDs, not names) and overlays existing attendance boundaries to model transfers and clustering. He said the feasibility analysis will include: 1) a five-year and 10-year cohort projection; 2) a building-by-building inventory of instructional spaces (general-education rooms, specialized rooms, self-contained special-education spaces); and 3) proposed boundary adjustments and the consequences of any closure, including transportation and program impacts. "If we find that it's feasible to close a school building, we also have to tell you what the consequence of that closure is," he said.

Public comments and board discussion focused on class sizes and instructional quality. Several parents urged smaller classes, citing research and personal classroom observations; one parent said a Tennessee study found classes of about 15 produced long-term student benefits. Board members asked the demographer to present utilization tables by school and to preserve feeder patterns where possible when proposing boundary changes.

Timing and next steps: Haber said a preliminary administrative review will be ready by Oct. 31 and that the firm will present recommended options to the board by Nov. 30 with a final report targeted for Dec. 15, 2025. The board asked Haber to provide three sets of tables for each school (current targets and two alternate target scenarios, including one two-students-lower option) so trustees can evaluate instructional-space needs and budget consequences.