There are a lot of districts out there that are evaluating whether or not they should close school sites and condense their enrollments at certain school sites. So looking at the capacities at each of those sites against your enrollments with your demographic study is vital to that process.

In this episode, our Senior Funding Associate, April Thompson, returns alongside Rob Murray, our Director of Demographics. Together, they dive deep into how demographic studies shape the strategies and decisions within school districts. From tracking student movements to projecting enrollments and understanding community perceptions, April and Rob offer valuable insights into this complex field.

As we continue this journey, your feedback and suggestions are invaluable to us. Stay tuned for more enlightening conversations with the King team, partners, and industry experts.

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Episode Transcript

Floyd: Okay. So why don’t you both go ahead and introduce yourselves?

Rob: Sure. I’m Rob Murray. I am the Director of Demographics here at King.

April: I’m April Thompson. I’m a Senior Funding Associate at King.

Floyd: So how do school districts use demographics?

April: So demographics are used in so many different capacities by a school district.

Rob: Yeah. But I mean basically, your facilities department will look at it for one thing while your business department or your Ed Services Department or your special ed departments might all have an interest in part of what we’re doing, but they might all be taking different things away from it.

April: Exactly. And when you’re talking about where these kids are coming in and out of, and where the kids are moving between sites inside and outside the district, that movement is really important. A lot of districts in California are looking at declining enrollment. So being able to project that movement and project out the enrollments for your district are really important by site especially. Because there are a lot of districts out there that are evaluating whether or not they should close school sites and condense their enrollments at certain school sites. So looking at the capacities at each of those sites against your enrollments with your demographic study is vital to that process.

Rob: Something you just said kind of reminded me when I was more first starting to do this, I think what surprised me and what still surprises a lot of school districts who haven’t delved into this a lot before is how much their students are moving around from one year to the next, even if they’re not leaving the district.

I’ve seen districts where as many as a third of the students from one year to the next had changed address when you were actually trying to track student by student to see kind of who was moving where. And that was eye-opening for me. And we’re just trying to take all of this reality that’s going on and distill it down into something that again all these various people in different parts of the school district can use to help them do their job a little better.

April: It’s important too when you’re trying to communicate this very complex data to your community. A lot of community members have certain perceptions of where the kids are, how that movement, what that movement really looks like. And a lot of the time the perception that the community has or is very different than what the actual data is going to show.

Rob: A lot of it is not just having a single answer, but it’s saying, “Look at this and look at this other thing.” And all three of these different things are all pointing in the same direction. And that’s why we can have some more confidence in saying something that isn’t intuitively true, even for people who live in this community. You think that you’ve been seeing this because you live here and I’m telling you that it’s actually different things happening.

April: And when you come in with the demographic study, you have the data that you can shine a light on and acknowledge the community’s perception, but then show them what that actual data shows. And so that you are really supporting the district towards their end goal by having that data and the resources to back it up and you show the calculations, you show how you derived that data, that information.

Rob: Absolutely. And then sometimes it really is just, “Yes, this is exactly what we thought was happening, but we just didn’t have a way to demonstrate it. And this just perfectly lines up with what we thought. And now we actually know why it’s happening.”

Floyd: I’m curious to hear each of you share an interesting story of how demographics and these studies that Rob does has really made something great happen. Or contributed to something great.

April: Don’t steal mine.

Rob: I know. Why don’t you go first, then? We’ll completely remove that opportunity for me.

April: Okay. Well, we have a district who we came into and they had been constructing what’s considered new construction. They had applications that were SFP applications that were in line for new construction. New construction eligibility is a little bit different than modernization eligibility because new construction eligibility is based on your available capacity to house students throughout your district. And then you put that up against your enrollments. So you say, “Okay, this is how much space we have for these kids. And this is how many kids we have.” And that if there’s a Delta, as in you have more kids than you have space, then that creates new construction eligibility. Is that about boiled down, Rob?

Rob: That boils it down. Yep.

April: So it’s very oversimplified. But the wrinkle with new construction eligibility is that the Office of Public School Construction, it takes them a few years to pick up your applications and actually process them once they have been submitted. So you’re looking at enrollments one year, in year one when you submit your application, three years later, that application for new construction gets picked up. OPSC wants to make sure, “Well, do you still have that Delta between your enrollments and your capacity? Do you still have a need for new construction?” So you have to justify your request for that new construction eligibility at the time your application gets picked up. So we had a district that had already constructed these projects, and now their applications are getting picked up a few years later. And we needed to be able to say with certainty whether or not they were going to have the eligibility and new construction to fund those applications within this next year. So Rob did a really great job looking at the projections and was able to give a range between conservative to generous. You explain it a little bit better than I do.

Rob: Just basically what we were looking for in that case was assuming that your enrollments next year or what I projected, we can tell you that your application would sail through no problem. But then let’s show you some other degrees of where your actual enrollment can land, giving us those inputs we have to use in the state’s calculator for enrollment projection. And then what that would lead to for your eligibility.

April: Yeah, and when you’re working in school facilities, you’re really looking at maybe the next 10 years, sometimes 15 years of projects, and planning out. If you have a local bond that’s been sold and you have to time out your issuances, if you have a $100 million bond and every few years you can get a $25 million issuance and you’ve got four installments of that bond where you’re going to get that funding, you need to be able to project out your cash flow and say, “Okay, this is our influx of bond funds. Where’s our influx of state funding? Where’s that going to fit into our cash flow?” So that you can confidently enter into construction contracts and your facilities projects knowing that you’re going to have a certain amount of money in the bank to pay those people who are on your projects doing the work. So being able to confidently project, and even if it’s a range, being able to confidently project those new construction, that estimated funding is really important.

Rob: This goes back a few years, but we did have a district where, kind of to April’s point, there was an application in, there were plans approved, they were going to build a new school. And the projections that we were showing indicated that you probably don’t actually need a new school.

April: They were going to have enough space already throughout the district to accommodate those kids.

Rob: For what you were going to spend building a new school, you could instead do a lot of improvement in modernization projects at your existing schools and have a lot more kids benefiting.

There was a district that just had me come in, look at some projections. And same thing, they, for a lot of these school districts, passing a bond and having this money that you can use on facilities projects is a once every so often kind of thing. And you really want to make sure that you’re going to get the best bang for your buck. And there’s some development going on. There’s some thought to, there’s some land over here, the school district could get that, we could get a brand new school because we think there might be some growth. And I think some of the people in that school district were really just hoping to be able to invest that money into the schools they were already using. And it was just very important to show them that yes, even with some of what you’re seeing, you are going to be just fine with the space that you have.

April: It’s just crazy to think of all the different inputs that go into creating this type of study.

Rob: And when people ask us, why are we doing this? Why are we making these decisions? Now we actually have things we can explain to people. And that always feels good.