AUGUSTA — The city’s school population is expected to grow over the next decade after experiencing a 10-year dip, bucking a statewide trend of decreasing student enrollment.

That could bring both potentially good and bad financial consequences.

Having more students, in general, brings more state subsidy. But those students are also going to need classroom space, possibly requiring new construction or at least keeping school buildings open rather than looking to close them to save money.

Augusta’s school population is projected to grow modestly over the next decade, with roughly 155 more students expected in 2021 than the 2,369 in Augusta’s public schools now.

“Consolidation and shrinking and closing schools, like you have in the past, I think that strategy is going to be harder in the future,” Frank O’Hara, a Hallowell-based consultant with Planning Decisions, told the Board of Education on Wednesday.

Superintendent Cornelia Brown noted a previous study recommended Hussey Elementary School be replaced, because of its age and condition. Augusta has applied for state funding to replace Hussey, but its application is ranked 17th, Brown said, a placement that leaves it unlikely to get state funding any time soon.

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She said the new data suggests Augusta will have too many students to simply close Hussey without a replacement and disperse students among the city’s other schools.

“It’s a discussion we’ve had for two to three decades here,” Brown said. “We have an aging facilities stock. You always wonder, ‘Can we move kids, consolidate schools?’ But it doesn’t sound like that is possible, given what (O’Hara) said. You cannot just take the population and divide it among other schools. Now that we have that information, some of the heavy lifting needs to be done, to decide what to do about Hussey.”

Seeking student population projections to use in making decisions about buildings and other long-term issues, city school officials contracted with Planning Decisions to estimate how many students Augusta could have every year from now until the 2021-2022 school year.

The firm projects 2,524 students will attend the city’s schools by 2021. The last time the schools had more than 2,500 students was 2007, when 2,545 students attended public schools in Augusta.

O’Hara told Board of Education members that one reason the school population is projected to increase is baby boomers’ babies had babies.

“There looks to be modest growth in the Augusta school system for the next five to 10 years,” O’Hara said. “The reason is probably the echo of the echo of the baby boom. In the 1960s, with the baby boom, Augusta schools had over 1,700 students at Cony High School alone, and probably had 4,000 in the entire school system. Then there were fewer. Then there was the echo, an increase as those baby boomers had kids.”

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The project increase appears to represent grandchildren of baby boomers, he said.

Augusta’s projected increases are the opposite of the statewide historical trend of declining student populations. For example, in 2001 Maine had 210,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade, By 2006 that number had dropped to 198,000 and in 2010, it dropped to 187,000, according to state Department of Education data.

State Education Department spokesman David Connerty-Marin said the rate of declining populations has slowed and, in general, the department anticipates statewide enrollment to bottom out and slowly start to climb again in coming years. He said the department does not have recent, specific state student population projections.

O’Hara said one reason Augusta’s student population may be growing faster than other areas of the state is a trend of more young people favoring urban areas.

“The younger generation has more of a preference for urban living,” he said. “It has a little different values than the older generation, my generation.”

O’Hara said other more urban parts of the state, such as Lewiston and Portland, are experiencing more student population growth than more rural areas of the state.

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The projections are based on multiple factors, including the number of new housing units built annually, data on people moving in and out of the city, birth trends and other information.

But O’Hara said the main reason Augusta’s student population is expected to increase is more people in Augusta are having babies and more of those children are remaining in Augusta into their school years.

And the consulting firm expects that trend to continue.

Capital Area Technical Center Director Scott Phair, who is retiring at the end of the school year, suggested officials consider using technology as a potential alternative to constructing new buildings to accommodate students in the future.

Augusta once had two middle schools, but Buker Middle School was closed in 2003 and Hodgkins Middle School in 2009, both as cost-saving measures. Sixth-grade students now attend the city’s elementary schools, while grades seven and eight students attend Cony.

Keith Edwards — 621-5647

kedwards@centralmaine.com


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