New Trier has experienced a recent drop in student enrollment, causing concern among students and staff.
According to Superintendent Dr. Linda Yonke, this drop is minor and expected.
“There was a population growth for about ten years that started in the mid-90’s and went until around 2005,” stated Yonke.
This growth was natural as housing was turning over in the early 90’s, causing older families to move out of the district and younger families to move in.
However, the district was aware that this growth in enrollment was going to taper off.
“There are two factors which impact enrollment; housing and birth rate,” said Yonke.
Every two years the school hires a demographer who looks at many factors and patterns including schools students come from, how many families move into the district each year, and why families are moving to the district.
“The demographer looks at housing prices, how many houses are in the district, the age of children in the houses, and tries to figure out all of the trends,” said Assistant Principal of Administrative Services Gerry Munley.
Over the past 6 or 7 years, the birth rate has dropped significantly in the area.
According to Yonke, this impacts New Trier because there aren’t as many children being born in the district, so there are fewer kindergartners, leading to fewer 8th graders and so forth.
However, kindergarten class sizes are unhelpful in determining high school class size. “We never have been able to look at a kindergarten class and predict how many students we will have freshman year because so many families move in when kids are in elementary school,” said Yonke.
Additionally, the economic downturn of 2008 affected the size of enrollment. Not as many families were moving into the district because they couldn’t afford the high cost of living.
At the same time, families haven’t been moving out because the value of property had gotten so low, said Yonke.
“The good thing is that housing has stabilized and we are starting to have more families moving in; however, the birth rate is still low. We are predicting that we will stay around 4,000 kids for at least the next 5 years,” said Yonke.
The freshman class next year will be a very large class, and those students are called “9-1-1 babies.”
According to Yonke, after a large event or tragedy, there is a big increase in the birth rate, which we can see happened after 9/11.
The demographer looks ahead 15 years in their projection, going until the 2029-30 school year.
“Usually the demographic projections are pretty accurate for the first five years, but everything beyond that becomes less accurate,” said Munley.
The demographer gives three projections: one that shows lower enrollment than projected, one for higher enrollment, and one for currently anticipated enrollment.
Contrary to popular belief, the amount of students who choose to attend private schools in the area does not affect the enrollment change for New Trier.
About 10% of Loyola students live in the district, while the other 90% live outside the township.
New Trier has not seen a notable increase in the number of children choosing to attend those private schools recently.
Regardless of the enrollment change, teachers and class sizes will stay roughly the same.
“We added a lot of teachers when we were growing and we have kept a higher number of teachers. However, there has been a minor reduction in the teaching staff,” said Yonke.
There are almost 400 teachers in the school and although some reductions are being made, the administration said they are trying to keep the teaching staff steady.