By Ward Peck
Editor
    Cape Elizabeth Town Planner Maureen O’Meara presented the town’s School Board finance committee with a proposal to update school enrollment forecasts used in developing the town’s comprehensive plan as well as budget deliberations within the school department.
    O’Meara said the town hopes to forecast school enrollment out to the year 2020 in order to reduce the frequency of comprehensive plan updates in the future. Yet the current model, prepared by the firm Planning Decisions, Inc. of South Portland in 2000 and updated in 2003 has already diverged significantly from actual school enrollment in the past few years. That variance is expected to grow larger as the forecasts look farther into the future.
    O’Meara explained that the “best fit” methodology used by many suburban communities in Southern Maine does not seem to fit Cape Elizabeth very well and a new model is needed to take into account the town’s unique growth pattern.
    O’Meara described Cape Elizabeth as a “mature” suburban community that is now several decades past the high growth rates experienced by other suburban communities in the more recent past and present. The growth Cape Elizabeth experienced has made the town more densely populated than many of its suburban neighbors with little developable land left for new home starts. The “best fit” model, according to O’Meara, places a disproportionate emphasis on the number of building permits to forecast growth in Cape Elizabeth. The model predicts a low number of building permits translates into relatively slower growth in the school age population.
    But school enrollment has not followed the trend documented by the model.
    School budget documents from this past year’s budget debate show the average variance between forecast models and actual enrollment over the past five school years at 46 more actual students than predicted. While the variance represents a small fraction of the total student body, it still represents roughly two classrooms worth of students with per-pupil spending in Cape school at roughly $9,000.
    In addition, the trends predicted school enrollment was to have peaked in the 2004-2005 school year. In reality, school enrollment continued to increase during the following two school years. Enrollment numbers presented to the school finance committee do show a decrease in the current school year (2006-2007) as well a predicted decrease in the next year, but higher enrollment than forecast.
    In an attempt to account for the disparity, O’Meara and School Supt. Alan Hawkins surveyed a sample of existing home sales from a recent 12-month period.
    In the “Public Facilities” section of the draft comprehensive plan (which can be found on the town’s website), O’Meara asks, “As the Cape Elizabeth population ages, the indication is that the number of empty nester households is increasing. Are these empty nesters now making the choice to sell their single family homes, with new families the likely buyers, or are home sales’ household size neutral?”
    According to O’Meara, the survey found, “…the 158 homes from the September 2004-2005 sample set…compared school age children from these addresses before and after the sale. Prior to the sale, 30 school age children lived in these homes. After the sale, 116 school age children lived in these homes.”
    The preliminary conclusion of the study, “suggests that in-migration has a greater impact on school population than new construction.”
    But in her presentation to the school board finance committee, O’Meara suggested a more rigorous methodology be developed by a group such as Planning Decisions in order to develop an accurate and credible update to the school enrollment forecasts.
    While the committee found the argument for a new forecast model persuasive, it was unclear how such a study would be funded. Hawkins seemed to suggest the school system did not have any money to fund the project.
    It was suggested the school administration would approach their municipal counterparts to share the cost since both would be using the data.
    Another obstacle to applying a new formula is timing. The draft comprehensive plan is expected to be submitted to the Town Council by the end of February. But O’Meara said the council is not expected to open deliberations on the draft until several months later. She said the updated finding could be included if they were finalized before the council began its deliberations.