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Mail Tribune photo Predicting growth in school districts isn't an exact science, but local school officials are finding mistakes are too costly to repeat due to funding changes. Shown here are Jackson Elementary Students. Enrollment trends: hard to pinpoint By Vicki Guarino Ashland school officials had expected the opening of college housing for married students to bring only a few more youngsters into the public schools. At the most, administrators figured, these campus households would have no more school-age children than other Ashland apartments, Superintendent John Daggett recalls. They were wrong. Instead of a few new students, Ashland immediately enrolled 56 students from the new housing when it opened a few years ago. The increase -- equivalent to almost three new classes -- prompting a shuffle of students as well as a hasty call to a professional demographer. "That was one of those shockers to us," Daggett recalls. School districts these days can't afford many such surprises. They're too expensive. A mistake in forecasting enrollment means either a sudden shortfall in state funding and midyear program cuts, as Central Point endured a year ago, or insufficient funding and services for kids. So much depends on accurate enrollment forecasts that many districts hire professional demographers to do the job. The Medford School District, for instance, gets a 40-page, $5,000 report every other year from Portland demographer Judith Barmack, She factors in everything from hospital births to Oregon Department of Transportation delays on development in southeast Medford. "She goes into a lot more depth than we have time to do," says Superintendent Steve Wisely. "Because that number is so significant, we just don't dare make a mistake." Ever since Oregon voters approved property tax limitations in 1990, responsibility for school funding has shifted from communities to the state. State money for public education is been based largely on number of students in school. Administrators tell the state how many students they are expecting -- Medford, for instance, is anticipating 12,482, a 125-student increase -- and the state then allocates the money. This year, on average, the state funding amounted to about $4,500 per student. At first glance the system looks simple, but school administrators have stumbled across complications. While districts have become economically dependent on enrollment numbers, those numbers have become increasingly difficult to gauge. Even at a time when changes in enrollment have ranged only a percent or two, variables have emerged to make accurate forecasting difficult. A growing community, for instance, no longer portends a growing school. Central Point officials erred two years ago in expecting that the city's many new, moderately priced homes would draw young families. Instead of increasing, enrollment dipped last year and the district had to make midyear program cuts to bring expenses back in line with state funding. The phenomenon of childless homes is not unique to Central Point. Family makeup has changed across the country, says Daggett. The so-called empty nesters -- parents whose children have grown -- and other demographic shifts, such as single-parent families, all effect school enrollment. "It's our culture right now," Daggett says. "We're an aging population. It used to be that you could count the houses in your community, multiply by a factor and project your enrollment." In the Medford district, for instance, demographer Barmack noted that a new Jacksonville subdivision of $180,000-$280,000 homes is attracting a mix of families with kids and couples whose children are grown. With that pattern in mind, she is cautioning Medford officials against making any predictions about homes to be built in the North Phoenix Road area until families actually move in. For Barmack, a more important indicator of school growth than new housing is new jobs. A community that is creating new employment opportunities will draw families with kids. Following that reasoning, Barmack's report to Medford covers issues far removed from curriculum reform, student discipline, school bus routes, and other day-to-day education matters. Her report refers to the collapse of Asian markets, and the impact those markets have on Oregon. She offers a sampling of economic forecasts, including Oregon chief economist Paul Warner's prediction that job growth will slow, dampening interest in moving to the region. No matter how thorough an enrollment projection might appear to be, however, mistakes still can happen, says Eagle Point Superintendent Ted Adams. The district also uses a professional demographer, but administrators nonetheless nearly made a major miscalculation last year, when they saw enrollment rise markedly in Eagle Point city schools. Initially, they counted the new students as an enrollment increase for the 600-square-mile, 4,000-student district. Then Adams started seeing some familiar faces. "I'm in every school every week, so the kids know me," he says. Week after week, Adams came across youngsters in Eagle Point who remembered him from the district's White City schools. When he inquired, kids told Adams their parents had just moved to Eagle Point. Administrators checked, and came upon a trend. Young families rent inexpensive housing in White City, save money and find homes they can afford to buy in Eagle Point. "That's not growth to the district," says Adams. "It's growth to the Eagle Point schools." The older rentals that these families are leaving behind in White City no longer are attracting families, and enrollment has been dropping in White City. "You just have to be out in the environment," Adams concludes. "There's no substitute for that person-to-person contact." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA