District Planning of Enrollment Changes

I was pleased to partner with Bellwether Education Partners on writing a blog post for The 74 Million on strategies that districts can implement to better detect, assess, and respond to student population changes that are occurring in their cities. While districts may not be able to stop the population change, improving their understanding and the impact of these changes can empower leaders to adapt, limiting the chances of enrollment shock and boost stability and sustainability.

If districts can do just one thing, it would be to challenge their Planning departments (or equivalent) to deliver an analysis of how enrollment has changed and to conduct a forward-looking forecast to understand the magnitude of future changes, both at the city-wide level as well as by region.