By Linda Conner Lambeck

WESTPORT – After grappling for years with declining enrollment in the town’s public schools, the student head count has crept up.

More families with small children have moved to town.

Is it a blip?

Will the sudden upsurge that forced the district to add elementary school classes continue once the pandemic goes away?

For answers, school officials have turned to their enrollment gurus, the New England School Development Council.

A report provided to the Board of Education this week by Karen L. LeDuc, a senior associate at NESDC, was tempered with provisos.

The district plans for a second opinion later this month from Mike Zuba and his firm, SLAM Collaborative.

The bottom line from LeDuc is that despite the unexpected bump in enrollment during the pandemic, projections three years out show elementary grade enrollment stabilizing and middle and high school enrollments staying flat or continuing to decline moderately.

“The pandemic was a challenge for everyone,” said Supt. of Schools Thomas Scarice, suggesting it is, in part, responsible for the data uncertainty.

Enrollment projections are a primary driver of the schools’ budgeting and facility use. The enrollment determines how many classrooms are needed and how many teachers the district needs to employ.

LeDuc, appearing at the board meeting remotely, told the panel, as well as several newly sworn-in board members in the audience, that her firm’s projections of 5,185 students for 2020 fell within 50 students of the K-12 enrollment of 5,235 this year.

That said, she reported the town faces somewhat contradictory trends: a continued decline in the local birth rate — last year it was 162, or 25 fewer than the year before — but an increase in the number of families moving into the district.

To predict enrollment, LeDuc said her firm looks at several factors, chief among them:

● Birth-to-kindergarten ratios.

● In-migration.

● Real estate sales.

Since 1981, Westport has enrolled more kindergarten students than those born in town five years earlier, according to LeDuc.

Over the past decade, the town has averaged 187 births per year. Last year, it was 162 births.

At the same time, Westport has recorded 125 or more students enroll in kindergarten whose families moved here after they were born. This year, that number was 232, according to the presentation.

“Students move into Westport in order to experience the Westport school system,” LeDuc said, a reference to its top-notch reputation.

Last year alone, covering all grade levels, LeDuc said there was a net gain of 101 students moving into town.

Many of those new students are said to be families leaving New York.

For this academic year, several sections had to be added at the elementary school level to accommodate the unexpected enrollment growth.

John Bayers, the district’s assistant superintendent for human resources and general administration, said that while the district got by with 110 elementary class sections two years ago it is now up to 118.

“Striking to me is if you look at Greens Farms and Coleytown elementary schools … both [with 18 and 19 sections, respectively, pre-pandemic] have the potential to reach 24 sections in fiscal year 2023,” Bayers said. “It is pretty amazing when think about it.”

Outgoing board Chair Candice Savin asked LeDuc, “Is there a chance for an increase or is this it?”

For guidance, LeDuc points to real estate.

Over the past several years, an average of 404 single-family homes were sold in town.

In 2020, that number jumped to 584 single-family homes. Through August 2021, 427 single-family homes have changed hands. The median sales price of a Westport home is $1,465,000.

LeDuc doesn’t see the in-migration increasing too much more since 80 percent of the new residents are buying homes on existing lots, not new homes that would significantly add to the overall inventory.

In 2020, there were 56 building permits issued for single-family homes and 32 for multi-unit dwellings.

Development is limited in town largely because most residential lots are classified by zoning regulations as one- or two-acre minimum. 

Over the next three or four years, LeDuc predicted stability with enrollment, perhaps reaching 5,373 by 2026.

Any farther out, because of the on-going pandemic and related economic issues, the predictions become less reliable, she said.

Asked by board member Liz Heyer to define stabilization, LeDuc said that would be characterized by consistent enrollment over a three-year period.

Outgoing board member Elaine Whitney asked if families new to Westport might move back out once the pandemic ends.

LeDuc said that, generally speaking, once families enroll their children in a school system, they stay.