St. Vrain Valley School District over the next few years expects to gain back enrollment lost in the 2020-2021 school year and anticipates increases for years to come.
“Due to the pandemic and impacts of going online and in hybrid models, many students opted to home school scenarios. In the case of St. Vrain, over a thousand students opted for alternative choices for education or to hold off on entering the educational system during the pandemic,” Superintendent Don Haddad stated in a memo to the board of education.
In 2020, SVVSD enrollment was down by more than 1,100 students, with the largest losses at elementary schools, particularly in preschool and kindergarten as parents opted not to enroll their children until next school year, when most of the instruction is expected to be done in person, SVVSD Planning Director Scott Toillion said during the board meeting.
Middle school enrollment has remained virtually unchanged, while high schools saw an uptick in student enrollment this past year he said.
[Related: Colorado schools missing 29,900 students as pandemic disrupts education]“This has been one of the more interesting years to project, we’ve had a worldwide pandemic, we’ve had a new school that’s going to open, we’re also beginning a LaunchED program so a lot of things are happening that could impact enrollment projections and how things look over the next few years,” Toillion said.
Several factors impacted growth locally, including birth numbers, the shutdown of international student migration and a slowing local economy.
Toillion cited a study by international nonprofit IZA Institute of Labor Economics that looked at Google search trends to predict the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on births in the U.S. Above-normal search volume for keywords related to conception and pregnancy are associated with higher numbers of births, while searches for keywords related to unemployment have the opposite effect, according to the study.
The IZA analysis suggests that between November and February, monthly births across the country will drop by close to 15%, which mirrors declines seen after the Spanish Flu pandemic and the Great Depression.
SVVSD has no international students enrolled this year, according to Toillion.
“That was a big impact on the state population… closing down of international migration,” he said. “And we are still seeing impacts of working remotely, how that impacts families’ travel or doing school (and work) remotely.”
But even as trends have led to lower enrollment this year, the district anticipates a growth trajectory for at least the next decade.
“The state demographer identified Colorado is still a growth state,” Toillion said. “Over the next 10 years, the growth in the Front Range is going to be about 640,000 to 700,000 … a great deal of this growth is going to be right here ... where St. Vrain is located.”
Birth numbers in 2019 were highest in the Erie and Skyline attendance areas, which amount to 44% of births across the region SVVSD serves, followed by Fredrerick (15%) and Longmont (14%). Lyons, Mead, Niwot and Silver Creek attendance area births were all less than 10%, totaling 27%.
Estimates of building permits project more than 2,100 housing units will be built in 2021 across the SVVSD service area, with the most in Longmont followed by Frederick.
Close to 43,000 lots for housing units proposed in new developments have come to SVVSD for review, with significant concentrations in the Erie, Mead and Frederick areas.
School districts in northern and eastern Colorado are seeing more growth and more potential compared to other areas across the state, Toillion said, adding Weld County is projected to have more aggressive growth compared to Boulder and other counties.
“The area (in Weld County) that has really been growing significantly is the area in our district,” he said. “From 2020 to 2025, (the state is) expecting to see 38,000 new residents in Weld (and) 7,000 in Boulder, so a gain of 45,000 kind of centered in our area.”
The combined projected Boulder-Weld population growth from 2020 to 2025 is 45,319, with a growth rate of 11.5% in Weld County and 2.2% in the Boulder County area over the five years, Toillion said.
Areas such as Aurora and Adams County project continued student loss, while Boulder Valley School District expects a flatter growth rate than SVVSD.
“Based on the known factors, a total growth for (SVVSD) in 2021 is expected to be 254 students at the mid-level. Charter schools project 54 students of this total. A little over 300 students are projected in the online program LaunchEd. Based on this estimate of LaunchEd, there will be some reduction at the district neighborhood schools,” Haddad stated in the memo to the board.
“The low-level estimate for 2021 is an overall increase of 69 students while the high-level estimate reflects a growth of 454 students,” he stated.
The district’s enrollment numbers are not projected to get back to where they were prior to the pandemic until 2023, especially at the elementary level, Toillion said, adding that by 2025 growth rates will pick up, followed by faster-paced growth through the end of the decade.
