The projections contained in a population study recently commissioned by the Central High School District has surely eliminated one argument for any facility expansion — we need more room for students!
“We won’t be able to use that as the rationale” for a facility expansion, district administrator Scott Pierce told the School Board this week. “We’re not looking at any growth.”
The last population study was done in 2005. Housing was booming here and newcomers moving in was a major trend. By 2014, that study projected a CHS population of 1,400 students.
The current economy has changed that outlook. Only one of the three projection models used in the new study ever has the school cracking the 1,200 student mark again through 2021, and then only for three years before retreating to around 1,100 in 2021.
Why? Some of the cited factors are slowed down in-migration, slow turnover of housing to younger people and decreasing birth rates.
