10-year Enrollment Forecasts for North Clackamas School District

In the late 2010s, North Clackamas School District (NCSD) was experiencing significant enrollment growth in one half of the district, requiring a new elementary, middle, and high school to accommodate enrollment increases. FLO began its relationship with NCSD by helping the district plan for necessary attendance area changes, including pre-boundary review analysis, development of boundary scenarios, and facilitation of committee meetings. Additionally, a significant part of our scope was developing a comprehensive community engagement and communications plan to ensure that NCSD provided a transparent and well-informed process to the community. 

Before developing or discussing any proposed changes to attendance areas, FLO assisted NCSD in identifying and articulating a set of underlying values, core principles, and decision-making criteria against which boundaries were evaluated. FLO then provided comprehensive facilitation services at committee meetings where members created and assessed boundary scenarios. The mapping applications that FLO developed also helped the committee communicate the boundary review committee’s progress to the community throughout the review process and after board acceptance. We also assisted with the implementation of the attendance area boundary changes by identifying affected students and maintaining public web-based mapping resources as the new attendance areas were rolled out.

Since the 2018 boundary review process, FLO has supported NCSD planning decisions by preparing 10-year enrollment forecasts annually. The dynamic population trends in the cities and unincorporated county that comprise the district provide FLO’s team of demographers and GIS specialists the opportunity to put their background in population geography and spatial analysis to the test. Working closely with district staff, the FLO team pores over historical enrollment trends and program participation to account for anticipated changes, such as additional capacity for the dual language immersion programs offered by NCSD. 

Forecasts are not solely derived from past enrollment—residential development information, population change, migration patterns, and birth rates are also vitally important to more reliable future enrollment predictions. FLO gathers this information via data-sharing agreements with state health departments, meetings with local urban planners, and through querying the U.S. Census Bureau decennial census and American Community Survey. The synthesis of this data allows FLO to produce detailed enrollment forecasts that help staff plan district-wide budget estimates, staffing by grade group, and facility use for each school, while the annual cycle of forecast preparation provides NCSD with regular opportunities to adjust long-range plans.