Over the next decade, Harvard’s schools can expect to shrink from about 1,200 students in all grades to about 900. That’s the conclusion from a study that interim Superintendent Joe Connelly presented to the School Committee on Tuesday.
“These numbers are starting to highlight a trend that we are going to have to address very quickly,” Connelly told the committee.
The study uses the cohort survival method to predict enrollment trends, Connelly explained. In an accompanying memo, Connelly wrote, “The basic assumption of the Cohort Survival Method…is that what has happened in the past, will continue to happen in the future.”
For example, 60 children enrolled in kindergarten this fall. Past experience indicates that slightly more children will join the class by first grade. In fact, the numbers predict that first grade will be just about 1.04 times the kindergarten enrollment—in this case, 63 children. And second grade will likely be 1.09 times the number of first graders—69 students.
But, as this year’s kindergarten class moves on from grade to grade, the largest it is likely to get is around 92 or 93 students, according to the cohort survival method. That is about 20 fewer students than in this year’s senior class of 114.
With 60 students entering kindergarten and 114 expected to leave next June, overall numbers are bound to decline if the trend continues. Connelly noted that the district has already dropped in size by about 100 students over the past seven years.
Nonetheless, Connelly cautioned that “enrollment projections are not an exact science” and any large housing development in town could change the predictions dramatically. The Concord-Carlisle Regional School District, for example, saw an increase in enrollments after a recent affordable-housing project was completed.
The birth rate in Harvard has been declining in recent years, but that is not the only predictor of the number of children entering school. It’s a widespread assumption in town that the quality of the schools attracts families who already have young children, and the numbers seem to bear this out.
For example, five years ago, 31 babies were born in Harvard. The 60 five-year-olds who started kindergarten this fall represent a doubling of that number—children who have come to Harvard between birth and school age. So Connelly’s chart assumes that the 29 babies who were born in 2008 will become a kindergarten class of 58 next year; and the 21 babies of 2009 will become a class of 42 the year after.
But Connelly noted that this recent trend was somewhat unusual. If the multiplier drops from 2.0 to 1.8 or less, then kindergarten enrollments might decline more sharply.
