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School district seeks enrollment forecast update
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The Scottsdale Unified School District wants Arizona State University to take a second look at the district's long-term enrollment projections.
The study, presented by ASU's Decision Theater in April 2007, used factors including age, density and income to predict that the Scottsdale district would have 31,786 students by 2030, not factoring in open enrollment.
But the study didn't consider current economic conditions, which likely have had an effect on the number of students in the area, said Tim Lant, the assistant professor at ASU who headed the study.
The study is off for the short term - it predicted 30,799 students this year with open enrollment at the district's 30 neighborhood schools, but there are closer to 25,000 students.
District officials and Lant said it was too early to judge the figures' accuracy because they were meant as long-term estimates, not predictions of short-term enrollment.
"Doing the short-term trending prediction is different from doing a long-term projection," said David Peterson, the district's assistant superintendent for operations. "It's very hard to do those long-term predictions."
District board member Dieter Schaefer said he would like to see a long-range plan for the district with detailed enrollment projections for the next five years, completed using economic indicators.
"We have got to have a long-range plan. We are shooting at a moving target otherwise," Schaefer said. "Enrollment is the basis for our funding. If we don't know what funding we have based on our enrollment, we're kind of shooting in the dark."
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