Republic file photo Colorful glass windows are visible in the newly remodeled courtyard at Clifty Creek Elementary School in Columbus, Ind., pictured, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2019.
ENROLLMENT forecasts for Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. indicate the district may face capacity problems in certain schools over the next decade.
A demographics study was recently created by Susan Brudvig, with its results presented to the school board at an April 6 strategic planning session.
“When we look at it, over the next decade, three of our elementary schools are expected to decline in enrollment, four to be mostly steady, and then four expected to increase pretty significantly,” said BCSC Assistant Superintendent of Financial Services Chad Phillips. “And unfortunately, three of those four schools are where we already see enrollment larger than we would like, either from a capacity standpoint or from an educational standpoint. Educationally, we have to discern whether a school with 1,000 students is larger than life for our youngest kids.”
Southside, Schmitt, Clifty Creek and Mt. Healthy are all expected to see average daily membership (ADM) growth for grades K-6 over the next decade. CSA Fodrea and Lincoln are expected to stay consistent due to being magnet schools, said Phillips.
Parkside, Richards, Taylorsville, Smith and Rockcreek are expected to see some decline. For some of the schools, the gap is larger than others. Smith is expected to decrease from 465 K-6 students to 354 over the next 10 years. Richards and Taylorsville are only expected to see a decrease of about 30 each during that time.
Enrollment and future growth for in elementary schools is part of a larger conversation as school officials look to the future.
Phillips said one of the “major drivers” behind seeking a new demographics study was BCSC’s plans to update and renovate several of its elementary schools.
“We wanted to use information from the study to help us make decisions about the future needs of each of our schools,” said Phillips. “We refinanced debt this last year so we could issue bonds without increasing the tax rate so that we could renovate Parkside and start some of the work on Schmitt.”
School officials have said that Parkside is expected to see a “full interior renovation” soon, with the project serving as a model for upgrades at other elementary buildings in the district.
According to Director of Operations Brett Boezeman, most of BCSC’s elementary school buildings are more than 50 years old and need to be updated to a “21st century learning standard.” However, this is expected to impact each building’s student capacity, as noted in BCSC’s presentation.
The renovated capacity numbers are “best guess” estimates based off the work that will be done at Parkside and how it affects the school’s general education classrooms, explained Boezeman.
“Because we are including things like a dedicated STEM lab and larger, flexible learning spaces, common spaces and some space for therapists and other counselors and such, Parkside has reduced the capacity of that building by three classrooms,” he said.
The capacity estimates assume an occupancy of 25 students per classroom, which would mean that Parkside’s capacity would be reduced from 950 students to 875 due to renovations. The same model, along with other building-specific information, has been used to estimate how renovations will affect other elementary schools’ capacities.
At Parkside, the decrease isn’t expected to be much of an issue; the school’s K to 6 enrollment was 714 this past fall, with 627 projected for 2031-32.
However, renovations could cause capacity issues at other schools, especially those expected to see gains. Mt. Healthy is already a tight squeeze, with 457 students and an estimated capacity of 475. That capacity could shift to 425 with renovations — even as enrollment is expected to grow to 527 in 2031-32.
Pre-K enrollment also factors into future plans and capacity needs. Phillips noted that many families will likely choose other options for young students, and it’s hard to predict the status of PreK funding in five to 10 years. However, he added that the school corporation doesn’t want to create facility plans that turn away families seeking these services due to capacity issues.
“Three of those buildings — Lincoln, Mt. Healthy and Schmitt — we would add PreK this fall if we had space,” said Phillips. “And we don’t have space in the buildings.”
Secondary schools
In addition to insights on elementary school growth, the demographics study also contains estimates for BCSC’s secondary schools.
At the middle school level, Northside is expected to decline in enrollment over the next decade, and Central is expected to grow. At the high school level, North is expected to grow, and East is expected to decline.
Officials are also seeing a change in the net number of students gained by East in transfers between its district and that of North.
From the 2012-13 to 2020-21 school years, transfers from North to East ranged from about 110 to 160 students each year. East to North transfers ranged from about 60 to 90. The net gain for East ranged from 50 to 90.
However, in 2021-22, East’s net gain dropped to eight, with 103 transfers to the school and 95 out from it. For 2022-23, the school is expected to see a gain of three, with 70 transfers in and 67 out.
Phillips said that officials had initially thought that the 2021-22 number was an anomaly due to the previous year’s eighth graders not going through the usual process of learning about the two schools and visiting them, then making a transfer decision.
“This spring, our current data continues that trend, which is only problematic in that … North’s enrollment was already up, and so they’re pretty tight, from a capacity standpoint,” said Phillips.
The big picture
For the overall district, enrollment records show that BCSC’s enrollment has risen slowly over the past 10 years, with some slight dips here and there. In the 2011-12 year, the average daily membership was 11,025; it is now 11,433 as of this past fall.
“BCSC for the last two decades has had somewhere between a quarter of a percent and a half of a percent growth in most years — which is just an anomaly in the state,” said Phillips. “For the most part, school districts in the state are either growing rapidly or declining in enrollment. So we’re kind of an outlier in the fact that we see very slow, steady growth from year to year.”
The demographics study includes a range of estimates for the next 10 years. On the high end, 2026-27 could see enrollment of 11,950, and 2031-32 could see 13,319. On the low end, those two years could see ADMs of 10,734 and 10,043, respectively.
As stated in BCSC’s presentation, “Enrollment could increase with a higher share of births and increased retention but would decline if base levels are too high.”
Phillips explained that Brudvig gave them three estimates for each year, with a base-level projection in between the high and low ends of the spectrum.
“Each year, of course, you get further away from the current data, the band gets larger as — for example, if the birth rate is a little higher or we capture a few more students than what we have in prior years, then that base is going to be off,” explained Phillips. “It’s going to be low. And so the next year, each year that compounds.”
He added that they still don’t have the local birth rate data for 2020 and 2021, which would affect those estimates.
Overall, Phillips feels positive about BCSC’s growth and said that it’s not moving too fast for them to accommodate. However, he noted that it is concerning how much of that growth is concentrated in one part of the county, which could create capacity issues.
It’s not surprising that much of the growth is to the south and west, said Phillips. However, he was surprised by the continued impact that this is projected to have on Southside, Mt. Healthy and Schmitt over the next decade.
“We need to be paying close attention to that now and not wait until it’s too late,” he said.
Next steps
In looking to the future, Boezeman said that the renovations to Parkside will begin this fall, likely in August, and be completed in different sections.
“Teachers at Parkside have been highly involved in providing feedback and really just the site development with everything,” he added. “And we’ve had a lot of meetings and info sessions. … We are certainly eager to get started on that project and certainly eager to look ahead to what’s next.”
Phillips said that as officials learn from Parkside and get updates on enrollment and birth rates, they’ll be able to present options to the school board regarding other facility projects sometime in the next 12 to 18 months. A group of school cabinet members meets every other week to look at the information.
BCSC officials have learned a lot from the work at Parkside already, said Phillips.
“Kids are a lot larger than they were in 1950, 1960, when most of these elementary schools were built,” he said. “…Also a lot of things in our buildings today that we didn’t have in 1960 — SROs and mental health professionals and a larger nurse’s office to serve students during what we’ve gone through over the last couple of years, larger cafeterias for larger students and those kinds of things. So we feel like learning this information about where we might be from an enrollment standpoint, and the shift of the population towards the west and to the south of the city really tells us that we need to pay close attention to our facilities planning so that we’re planning for 10 years down the road and not two years down the road.”
