Grade schools in Virginia counties will see record growth during the next five years, according to a study released Tuesday by the University's Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. Virginia cities including the City of Charlottesville, however, are likely to see a decrease in enrollment.
The Cooper Center has projected the total number of public school students in the Commonwealth will increase by 31,857 between 2006 and 2011, a rate of 2.7 percent.
The Cooper Center uses historical data to predict future enrollment patterns, said Michael Spar, Cooper Center research associate and report author, adding that the study predicts growth with 95 percent accuracy on average during a five-year period.
The study found that while the Commonwealth will see an overall enrollment increase in the next five years, fewer than half of its 132 school districts are predicted to experience growth.
Loudoun County schools in Northern Virginia have the highest projected growth rate, at 42.6 percent during the next five years, while rural Bath County schools will see the biggest decrease, at 23.5 percent.
Spar noted that there tends to be an overall trend of enrollment decrease in cities and increase in counties.
"You're looking at a long-term trend that's certainly been around since the 1950s," he said.
Administrators for Loudoun County Public Schools use the Cooper Center's study as one way of predicting growth, said Wayde Byard, the school system's public information officer.
Because Loudoun school administrators have several ways of dealing with growth effectively, including using the same basic layout for all new buildings and hiring veteran teachers, they focus more on other concerns, Byard noted.
"Growth is what we do at the end of the day," he said.
Charlottesville Public Schools, which are predicted to see a 5.4 percent decrease in enrollment during the next five years, make their own enrollment predictions, according to Edward Gillaspie, Charlottesville Public Schools director of finance.
"I pay attention to the enrollment projections that they do, and I use them as a kind of comparison model to the internal projections that we do," he said.
Gillaspie said his model is typically more accurate than the University's, noting that his office does "a little more fine-tuning with our own data."
The changes he makes to his initial calculations include factoring in new housing developments, he said. Once new developments are considered, the expected decrease in enrollment may not be as large, he noted.
According to the Cooper Center's report, other school districts expecting to see enrollment decreases include Virginia Beach, Richmond, Hampton and Newport News. Districts that will see large increases include Prince William, Chesterfield, Suffolk and Culpeper.
According to Donald Greer, division demographer for Virginia Beach City Public Schools, the city's recent decline in enrollment can be attributed to both decrease in birthrate and rising real estate prices.
Greer said the Cooper Center's model "is a good tool to use to make sure that we're both in the same ballpark"
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