Enrollment Considerations for �New School Planning

May 2022

Presented by Brian Eschbacher, Eschbacher Consulting

Context Setting

• The per pupil funding structure in Colorado, enrollment is a central planning consideration for new schools to support meeting sustainable enrollment levels that will result in the funding needed to operate a school with fidelity.
• There is an art and a science to understanding the enrollment dynamics for a new school.
• Analyzing the enrollment data case for a given county, district, or area within a district is as much about identifying areas of major risk as it is areas of opportunity.
• This presentation is accompanied by a data reference sheet that includes key metrics from the Colorado Department of Education to help school designers easily evaluate major enrollment factors.

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Key Enrollment Planning Metrics

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Metric

Importance to enrollment

• Distance is often a top choice factor, particularly for elementary

• Large number of students in targeted grades

• Beyond charters, what is the relative quality or connection of nearby schools that will serve as competition?

• Nearby schools lack quality and program models, creating family appetite for new and better options

• Families are willing to choose schools based on quality, including inter-district transfers
• Existing charters have waitlists showing excess demand

• Often, charter schools are competing against each other as much as district schools

• Declining areas are challenging for establishing new schools and have higher recruiting competition

• Positive (or at least flat) growth in targeted and feeder grades

Strong Conditions for Enrollment

• Aligning your school-desired demographics with the area makes recruiting / identity an easier fit

• Close alignment with your school’s targeted demographics

• Available capacity of existing schools to serve area trends
• Average enrollment size to signal recruiting pressure or potential closures

• Larger schools to reduce saturation and number of competitors

Size of nearby student population

Competitive set

$1,000,000-$2,000,000

$1-$400,000

Growth of nearby student population

Nearby student demographics

Additional factors

Charter market share

Enrollment Reference Spreadsheet

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• To increase access to key metrics, a reference spreadsheet has been created using 2021-22 CDE data.
• Users select the district they are interested in from the dropdown and each key metric will automatically populate.
• For the 33 largest districts (those with more than 5,000 students), the district’s rank relative to their peers populates to contextualize performance.

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Additional Areas to Understand in New School Planning

• Understanding the relative enrollment opportunities and risks is an art and a science.
• Further, there are data points that our reference spreadsheet is unable to gather and report, because they are held locally.
• School leaders should seek to understand additional areas as they plan a new school
• What school choices exist for families beyond their right-to-attend / boundary school, such as district magnets or existing charter schools? What program models do they offer?
• What is the relative quality of those options? (The most recent state SPF is from 2019)
• Do those schools have waitlists, suggesting there is unmet demand for these options?
• To what extent is transportation a barrier that may need to be met?
• Within districts, are there areas that could offer a better opportunity than others?

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