because city census data began producing kindergarten projections that were too low. An adjusted three-year average (2024, 2023, and 2022) for kindergarten is used this year, similar to recent years. See Section II for more information and discussion of the full methodology used in this year’s projection. This year’s projections use a modified five -year average cohort survival ratio methodology like the past three years, given the large enrollment decline in 2020 primarily due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than include the 2020 cohort survival ratios in the five-year average (which are very low and would decrease the five-year average ratios), the 2020 cohort survival ratios are omitted, and four years of cohort survival ratios are used (including 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021), which is, in essence, a four-year ratio. In addition, the cohort survival ratios for particular cohort grade levels (cohorts from grades K-to-1 and grade 5-to-6 at certain schools) have been adjusted to use a three-year average based on lingering enrollment impacts from the pandemic.
In addition, the following factors are integrated in the projections:
• School feeder patterns, district boundaries and buffer zones reflect current School Committee policies. Student assignment policy changes for the Angier, Zervas, and Cabot districts, and the effects on nearby school districts, were approved in September 2015 and October 2018 and are fully integrated into the projections. • Students participating in the METCO program are added to each school and grade after the average cohort survival ratios are applied. Students participating in the METCO program who will enter the system in kindergarten, grade one, or grade two each year for the next five years are also included in the individual school tables by grade. • The number of entering middle and high school students is based on percentages of students from lower grade level schools to reflect districting, out-of-district placements, and buffer zones. • The number of potential students from new residential properties is calculated and added to each school and grade after the average cohort survival ratios have been applied when special permits or building permits have been issued by the City of Newton.
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