Is any district a candidate for using the Cohort Survival Ratio Method? Is any district a candidate for using the Cohort Survival Ratio Method?  

CSR is most applicable for districts that have relatively stable increasing or decreasing trends without any major unpredictable fluctuations from year to year. In school districts that are encountering rapid growth due to new residential developments, CSR must be modified and supplemented with additional information to ensure accuracy. 

Calculating a single cohort ratio per grade to help project future enrollments is not typically performed since an “aberration year” can heavily impact the accuracy of the projections. Therefore, an average cohort ratio of the past 3-6 years is used to smooth out any irregularities that may exist in the data set.

How are new housing developments taken into account?

We compare the number of certificates of occupancy (COs) in the community from the last 5 years to the number of housing units proposed in the next five years.  Since CSR does take into account students who came from historical new housing, the baseline projections will be modified only if the future number of proposed houses is greater than the historical number of COs.

How many children come out of a new house? How many children come out of a new house?

That depends on a number of factors:  the type of home (single-family, condo, apartment, etc.), number of bedrooms, geographic location, and whether the housing unit is owned or rented.  In general, single-family detached homes with 3-4 bedrooms produce the most children.

To project kindergarten enrollment, birth data, lagged five years behind its respective kindergarten class, is used to calculate a survival ratio. Birth data is obtained from the Department of Health and Vital Statistics at the state level where more accurate records are kept as compared to municipal birth records.