To hear some people worry about crowding in the Harvard schools, one would think the number of school children in Harvard has grown by leaps and bounds. It turns out that over the last 20 to 25 years, Harvard’s public school K-12 population has grown (and sometimes shrunk) only gradually, by fits and starts, with quite a bit of the increase coming from choice and Devens students. In fact, from 1984 to today, the number of K-12 students in the Harvard schools has only grown from 992 to 1,267, an increase of 225. Of those current students, 89 are from Devens or from the school choice program, about 7 percent of the total enrollment. Without those 89 students, the growth in student numbers is well under 1 percent a year, on average.
As of last month, there were 512 pupils in grades K-5 at the elementary school, and 755 students in grades 6-12 at Bromfield, according to Harvard School Superintendent Tom Jefferson. Of that number, 77 are choice students from other towns, 12 come from Devens, and 1,178 are from the non-Devens portion of Harvard. All the Devens students, and 60 of the choice pupils, go to Bromfield.
Jefferson provided these numbers in a handout at the Nov. 13 School Committee meeting. Just for fun, I decided to compare current student population numbers to the enrollment history and projections used in the year 2000, when Harvard had to provide such information to justify its request for state reimbursement for the Bromfield building project. At that time, Bromfield was being renovated and enlarged, with a new classroom wing and new library. Adding space at Bromfield allowed the sixth grade to move from the elementary school to Bromfield, alleviating space problems at both schools. In 2002, just before the sixth-graders moved across the street, there were more than 640 students at the elementary school, which was built to house 620. With the project built, however, the schools predicted there would be enough space to handle anticipated student enrollment growth at least through 2010.
There were five models used in 2000 to project future enrollments, all based on the Cohort Survival Ratio, an enrollment projection method that compares the number of students in a particular grade to the number of students in the previous grade during the previous year. Each model provided slightly different enrollment projections, but if one averages the number of students predicted by the models to be in the Harvard schools for this year, the result is 1,324 students. In other words, the schools actually have 57 fewer pupils today than was projected seven years ago. However, all the models assumed that the choice program would be phased out, and that no Devens students would enroll. So, of the 1,324 K-12 student population that was predicted for this year, 1,322 of them were assumed to be coming from Harvard, with only two choice students left in the system. In reality, only 1,178 non-choice or non-Devens K-12 students are in the schools today. The model overestimated the number of Harvard public school children by 144, if you leave out choice and Devens students.
The fact that the number of Harvard students attending the public schools here is growing more slowly than predicted has helped the schools’ financial situation quite a bit. For each choice student coming here, the schools get about $5,000 from the state. The Devens students bring in even more; the town’s contract with the state to educate secondary students from Devens calls for about $10,000 in tuition per student. Having the extra space to accept these pupils has brought in much-needed revenue, currently $605,000 for this year’s budget.
At the Nov. 13 school board meeting, Jefferson said that for next year’s school budget, he assumes that the number of choice students will remain steady at 77. To replace the eight choice students who will graduate this year, he proposed adding eight new choice pupils.
“We want to bring in a few more [choice students] for next year’s second grade and fifth grade,” he said.
This year’s first grade is particularly small, with only 65 pupils. Without adding more students, Jefferson said he couldn’t justify keeping four second-grade teachers.
“This will put us in a position to not lay off staff,” he noted.
The slow growth in the student population has also helped the schools by giving them the space to add new programs, especially at the elementary school. With extra classrooms available, Harvard was able to institute an integrated preschool, which mixes special-needs preschoolers with tuition-paying non-special-education youngsters. The town is required by law to provide special education services to students needing them, starting at age 3. Previously, it had to pay tuition and transportation costs to send these students elsewhere, before the preschool was started at the elementary school.
In addition, Harvard now has two sections of full-day kindergarten, along with two sections of the traditional half-day kindergarten. Parents sending students to full-day kindergarten cover the additional costs by paying tuition. However, having the full-day option does require another classroom for these students.
Because these new programs at the elementary school take up classroom space, the school seems full, even while the K-5 population is 100 students below the school’s capacity. It is analogous to the old saying about work expanding to fill up the time allotted for it: school programs have expanded to fill up the available space.
Luckily for the schools, the most recent enrollment projections, done last April by consultants from the New England School Development Council (NESDEC), show that any current overcrowding at the schools is not likely to be a problem in the future. Barring major changes in town, such as Harvard taking back jurisdiction over Devens, with large numbers of houses built there, student numbers aren’t expected to grow.
In fact, NESDEC projects that the number of Harvard children in the public schools will actually decline by more than 100 students in the next nine years. This is due to demographics; because of the baby bust of the late ’60s and early ’70s, there are fewer young adults now producing babies. As the report points out, 2005 saw the fewest births in Harvard in at least 15 years. In addition, the annual number of building permits in town has been trending downward recently, NESDEC noted.
Of course, one has to take projections with a grain of salt. However, the projections of 2000 overestimated future school enrollments by a fair margin. If this year’s projections are also overestimating the student population in the schools eight years from now, Harvard may end up back where it started, with the same number of its children in the schools as the town had in the 1980s. On the other hand, they will be housed in nicer buildings than the students in 1984 were, as anyone who remembers the dungeon-like elementary school cafeteria in the basement of the old brown building can attest.
Editor’s Note: A Reporter’s Notebook is a reporter’s in-depth analysis of an ongoing area of coverage or a long-term issue.
