April 07--Declining enrollment is causing Naperville School District 203 to cut about 16 teaching positions across the district next year, but add the equivalent of 2.6 full-time special education teachers.
Bob Ross, assistant superintendent for secondary education, told the School Board on Monday that enrollment projections show 451 teachers are needed at the high school level for the 2015-16 school year compared to 455 teachers this year, a loss of four teachers.
Last month projections from school leaders showed the district requires fewer teachers at the elementary and junior high levels. District 203 expects to cut the equivalent of 7.65 full-time teachers in elementary grades and five teachers in the junior high schools.
The only area where more teachers are needed is special education where District 203 plans to hire the equivalent of 2.6 full-time teachers, Ross said.
The loss of 14 teaching positions represents about 1 percent of the teaching force. This year District 203 employs the equivalent of 1,416.22 teachers compared to the 1,402.17 teachers needed next year.
Board member Donna Wandke asked if class sizes will be affected in any way by the cuts. Ross said fewer students in the school means the district needs fewer teachers to maintain the same class sizes.
Declining enrollment will be the case for the District 203, at least for the next five years, according to Charles Kofron, the demographics expert hired by the district to help in long-term planning. Kofron is projecting the number of students to decline anywhere from 5 percent to 8 percent from 2014 through 2019.
The study shows District 203 enrollment for 2014-15 at 16,438 students and is projected to drop to roughly 16,100 next year. That trend is expected to continue through 2019-20 when enrollment figures could dip as low as 15,142 students, according to projections.
Kofron said the reason for the drop is an aging Naperville population. The number of people living in non-family households, which includes single person households or people living together, is rising. "Non-family households are an indicator of aging in a district," he said.
As people move to Naperville, the cycle of marriage, children, empty-nesting and senior residents plays out, Kofron said. He said the trend is for those older adults to stay put so the housing stock is not turning over to families with children.
That has not always been the trend, according to board President Jackie Romberg. She recalled that before 2005, couples were moving from their four-bedroom houses as soon as their children graduated from the Naperville school system.
While the trend might be for older adults to stay, Romberg suggested an improving economy and rising housing prices could shift back to pre-2005 days. Her view also was shared by board member Mike Jaensch, who noted the study almost assumes that no one is going to leave Naperville.
Kofron stressed his study is a work in progress and the district needs to continue to monitor changes in land use and birth rates. "What I'm giving you is a snapshot in time," he said it is up to the district to follow through and use the formulas and tools provided in the study.
Superintendent Dan Bridges said that is one of the reasons why Kofron was chosen for the study. Bridges said the district already has plans to plug in enrollment figures from this fall as well as continue to extrapolate enrollment using birth figures from the state.
"This is a working document that we can keep updating," he said.
subaker@tribpub.com
