By VICKI URBANIK

A demographer hired by the Duneland School Corp. has projected that the school system will grow by 500 students in the next decade, about the same amount that the schools have grown in the past five years.

In his report to the school board Monday, Jerome McKibben of McKibben Demographics said the vast majority of Indiana schools -- as much as 70 percent -- are projected to lose enrollment in the next decade. And for that reason alone, Duneland stands out, since the school system will likely be in the top 10 percent of Indiana schools that do grow.

But his projection for the 500-plus enrollment growth may come as a surprise to some who expected a bigger student surge. As school board member Nick Jurasevich commented, he sees all the new home starts in the community and figures that that will equate to a strong gain in enrollment.

McKibben said there will be a definite population growth in the community in the next 10 years, but that won’t automatically translate into a skyrocketing school enrollment.

“So we’re going to grow without kids?” asked school board attorney Michael Harris. Generally speaking, McKibben said, yes.

He gave a number of reasons why.

For every new home built in the community, more than two existing homes are currently being resold, mainly because people downsize as they grow older and their kids move out. That trend will only continue as more baby boomers age. “People who live here like living here. They’re going to stay put,” he said.

To back up his point, McKibben turned to the unusually large audience at Monday’s school board meeting and asked how many of the people in attendance plan to move out once their kids move on. Only a few hands went up.

McKibben said he’s never seen any school system with a lower drop out rate; Chesterton High School reported a graduation rate of 73 percent in the 2005-06 school year.

But with that success comes the phenomenon of having kids leave the community after high school. The Duneland community, and Indiana in general, is seeing a “large and growing” out-migration of 18-year-olds, he said. Many go on to college or the military and they don’t come back. “We don’t have the jobs to pull them back,” he said, referring to the high-tech or professional jobs sought by college graduates.

He said this area might be a hub for college graduates, if, for example, an Internet company relocated to this area or if a major geriatric health care institution were established. But college graduates are relocating to hot job markets in places like Chicago and other big urban areas. And McKibben said, young professional couples who plan to have kids tend not to want to work in Chicago and live in Chesterton, with their kids going to the Duneland Schools, due to time away from home and school.

The Duneland community has a brisk birth rate, but that’s not keeping pace with the kids now in school who graduate. Duneland actually needs about 100 new families moving in annually just to break even with the numbers leaving, he said.

So Duneland Schools has been seeing much of its enrollment growth from a migration of families moving in. Contrary to some perception, McKibben said the biggest influx has come not from Illinois but from Lake County.

To elaborate, in 2005-06 school year, 427 households moved to Porter County from Cook County, but 250 Porter County households moved to Cook County. By contrast, 1,850 households from Lake County moved to Porter County.

But McKibben said that in-migration from Lake County will start to slow. “Lake’s running out of people,” he said, referring especially to those in the 20-year-old, child-bearing age bracket.

The housing market is a major factor in demographics, and McKibben said the current housing crisis makes it tricky to make forecasts. The flat housing depression has hit every part of this country -- “no area has escaped” -- and the days of lenders giving away mortgages like candy are long over, he said.

“If you can’t get a mortgage, you’re not going to get a house,” he said.

He cited the housing boom that has occurred -- 1,100 new housing units have been built in the Duneland community in the last five years. During that time, the enrollment has climbed by about 500 kids. He noted that many of the new kids moving into the homes aren’t school age, but are under 4 years old.

McKibben noted that this area has not been hit as hard as other areas of the country in the rate of foreclosures. His forecast for the Duneland Schools includes 140 new housing units built in the school system per year, with 350 existing homes resold annually. His forecast also does not include a recession.

His projection also doesn’t include any speculative developments. He said the days of a major developer coming in and saying that a new subdivision will be completely built out with 500 new homes within five years are over.

While the rate of existing home sales to new home sales is now 2 to 1 in the area, that margin is expected to grow to 4 to 1 in the next decade, with downsizing a major contributing factor.

Several of the elementary schools are projected to have flat enrollments. One exception is Jackson Elementary, which McKibben projected will increase by 0.3 percent by the 2017-18 school year. Another is CHS, projected to increase 0.7 percent -- or a total enrollment of 2,268 -- in the 2017-18 school year.

The school with the biggest increase is projected to be Liberty Elementary, up by 4.1 percent in 2010. However, Liberty Schools is almost entirely dependent on new housing stock, and McKibben said for this reason, the enrollment growth in Liberty will likely slow after 2010, hit its peak in 2014 with 552 students, and then start to decline. By the 2017-18 school year, the school is projected to have 531 students.

Now What?

The school board hired McKibben to help it in its study of a possible new school and redistricting.

With the demographic data now in hand, Duneland Superintendent Dirk Baer said he intends to ask the school board’s permission at the next meeting to form “key communicator groups,” similar to those formed during the study of whether to build a new CHS.

He said the community groups will focus not just on the projected enrollment increase, but also what the community sees as educational needs in the next 10 years.

Posted 11/6/2007