MCPS Enrollment Is Nearly 1,800 over Projection

Education activists concerned about accuracy of forecasting method

A school bus sits outside Quince Orchard High School on the first day of school last month. File photo

Education activists have renewed concerns about Montgomery County Public Schools’ method to project school enrollment.

MCPS on Monday said it expects its pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade enrollment at its 207 schools to be about 165,200 students this school year. That is 1,761 more students than projected in the school system’s most recent capital improvements program, which sets an outline for future building projects.

“It’s concerning and it does impact school operations,” said Katya Marin, a member of the Montgomery County Council of Parent Teacher Associations. “You have, at every school, this scramble at the beginning of the year where teachers are saying, ‘Where are we going to put our kids?’ It really puts a lot of pressure on the administrators every year.”

Early this year, Marin and about 15 other activists wrote a letter to Superintendent Jack Smith and the school board outlining their concerns with the methodology used to create the new enrollment projections. The new projections differed greatly from earlier models, the group wrote.

They wrote that the latest projections don’t consider the latest county growth factors and they bend results to align with historic trends that may no longer be valid.

Without correcting what they say are “inaccuracies,” thousands of public schools students could be hurt for decades as construction projects continue to back up throughout the county, the group wrote in February to school officials.

Last year, rather than having an MCPS employee do the work, the district hired consulting firm MGT to create enrollment projections. Community members quickly raised concerns about the methodology the company used because the new projections differed greatly from the previous model.

Representatives of MCPS did not respond to requests for comment this week.

MGT used a weighted average of four projections models and curved the results based on historical trends for each school. The company used housing stock data from 2016 and added a 1 percent countywide growth rate.

The letter’s writers argue that some areas of the county have had little to no recent growth, while others have a housing growth rate of up to 4 percent.

MGT estimated the school system’s enrollment will continue rising through the 2027-28 school year, when the company believes there will be 175,035 students countywide.

Caitlynn Peetz can be reached at caitlynn.peetz@bethesdamagazine.com