New Canaan Public Schools is seeing an increase of 36 students year-over-year in 2016-17, though the district’s overall figure for the current academic year—4,210 students, K-12—came in below what had been projected, driven in part by fewer-than-expected kindergartners enrolled, officials said Monday.
At 273 kindergartners, this year’s total is 44 under projections and down 12 from last year, according to Gary Kass, the district’s director of human resources.
Even so, NCPS is projected to see consistently high overall enrollment into the foreseeable future, as the district enters “a period of sustained, stable enrollment,” Kass said during a meeting of the Board of Education, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School.
“In looking at the projections in the analysis of those projections, it looks like we are on a pretty steady course, and fairly stable in terms of where and when this will be in the coming years,” Kass said.
The comments come as Saxe Middle School undergoes an expansion that will be finished next fall—a project that gained support on the strength of an already-overcrowded facility with no enrollment relief on the horizon.
Though the district is projected to see a decrease of 22 students at Saxe Middle School next year, the school—designed to accommodate 1,200—is projected to get more than 1,300 students per year into the foreseeable future, peaking at 1,372 from 2019 to 2021, according to projections from the New England School Development Council, a nonprofit organization based in Marlborough, Mass. (See the full report here.)
Dr. Bryan Luizzi noted that next year’s modest decrease at Saxe is the direct result of the district’s largest class—the current eighth grade—moving up to New Canaan High School.
“That moves up and then the fourth grade coming to fifth grade is still a large class but not as large as the eighth grade, with 380 students,” Luizzi said. “That is where we are seeing fluctuations. It is not that people are leaving. This is not an ‘out-migration’—it is really that classes move up through the schools.”
Here’s a chart showing enrollment projections by grade combinations, and also in total:
Enrollment Projections PK-12, New Canaan Public Schools
| Year | PK-4 | 5-8 | 9-12 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | 1,617 | 1,361 | 1,268 | 4,246 |
| 2017-18 | 1,595 | 1,339 | 1,309 | 4,243 |
| 2018-19 | 1,595 | 1,361 | 1,293 | 4,249 |
| 2019-20 | 1,562 | 1,372 | 1,326 | 4,260 |
| 2020-21 | 1,567 | 1,372 | 1,354 | 4,293 |
| 2021-22 | 1,578 | 1,346 | 1,332 | 4,256 |
| 2022-23 | 1,583 | 1,352 | 1,353 | 4,288 |
| 2023-24 | 1,598 | 1,312 | 1,362 | 4,272 |
| 2024-25 | 1,608 | 1,302 | 1,364 | 4,274 |
| 2025-26 | 1,604 | 1,312 | 1,337 | 4,253 |
| 2026-27 | 1,600 | 1,323 | 1,345 | 4,268 |
In addition to current and projected enrollment, Kass reviewed figures related to total staff members, as well as class sizes across all grades.
Board of Education Chair Dionna Carlson noted that class sizes this year are coming in within district guidelines across the board for the first time since she had joined the school board.
Kass noted that the demographer who made the projections has said the expansion of Saxe Middle School, a capital project that includes a substantial renovation of the auditorium, could “have an impact of increasing the grades five to eight enrollments above the levels which appear in his forecast.”
“Similar facilities improvements in other districts have resulted in fewer students attending nonpublic schools,” Kass said. “At present there are 51 New Canaan students per grade attending nonpublic schools at he grades five to eight level, so over 200 students. The demographer points this out to us [because] he knows about the project and he knows it’s coming on line next year and he did not really include in his forecast the potential for numbers increasing at Saxe Middle School.”
School board member Maria Naughton asked whether NCPS has the capacity to accommodate those formerly private school students if they come.
Kass replied that the district’s demographer has seen variation across different districts, “so even though the projections say Saxe will be down slightly next year, by 20 students, we should not be surprised if they came through at the exact same numbers next year.”
Board of Ed member Hazel Hobbs asked whether the demographer had factored in any possible increase in students with the high-density building projects in New Canaan—one approved and underway at Mill Pond and another under consideration at Merritt Village.
Kass said that because Merritt is not yet an approved project, it was not a consideration for the demographer.
School board member Penny Rashin asked whether the demographer drew any conclusions from the number of houses on the market in New Canaan.
Kass responded that “he did include in his report all of the current houses on the market,” comparing them year over year and concluding that the figures fall “within our move-in numbers generally.”