District Projects Loss of 400 Students Over Next 5 Years

OSWEGO, IL — The Oswego School District 308 can expect a decrease in enrollment by 400 students over the next five years, an education planning expert said during the remotely conducted June 8 meeting of the school board.

Robert Schwarz, CEO of RSP & Associates — an education planning firm based in Kansas — discussed his firm's enrollment projections to the District 308 Board of Education.

According to Schwarz, enrollment changes are the result of the district's demographics, types of incoming development, affordability and birth rates. The coronavirus pandemic has also affected this as layoffs and furloughs, coupled with the uncertainty of the new school year model, can also decrease enrollment.

"Enrollment projections are something we keep a continuous eye on as they affect our staffing, as well as what our capacity looks like for each of our 308 schools," Superintendent Dr. John Sparlin said.

The district serves a 68.8 square mile area in Kendall, Will and Kane counties and operates 13 elementary schools, five junior high schools and two high schools. The schools are located in Oswego, Aurora, Montgomery, Plainfield and the unincorporated Boulder Hill subdivision. With just over 18,000 students, the district is currently the seventh largest district in Illinois.

Schwarz projected a decrease of 400 students in the district as a whole over the next five years with:

• At the elementary level, an increase of 100 students over five years
• Decrease of 400 students at the junior high level
• Decrease of 50 students at the two high schools.

Data showing five consecutive years of kindergarten enrollment lower than 1,200 students, with senior classes larger than incoming kindergarten classes helped the firm to determine the projected drop in enrollment, he said.

He also said if all planned housing developments happen within a "reasonable timeframe," future kindergarten enrollment could be between 1,100 and 1,200 students.

Instructional capacity challenges were also highlighted. Schwarz said instructional capacity is the appropriate amount of space at a school to accommodate student programming needs. Capacity was determined, he said, by the district's determination of a school's capacity, the amount of students who reside in a school's boundary, the amount of students who attend that building, and the amount of students who actually reside in that school's boundary and attend that school.

Board member Toni Morgan asked about how to understand parent/guardian reaction to boundary changes. Schwarz encouraged the district to engage them with surveys.