Voters in Bridgewater, Roxbury and Washington will be asked to go to the polls likely in April to decide on changing the regionalization plan for their Region 12 school district and whether a consolidated grades K-5 school should be built.
Enrollment projections to 2023 may give pause to residents making that decision.
Projections by statistician Peter Prowda predict a decline to 460 students region-wide in 2023. As of Oct. 1, 2013, student enrollment in the region was 796.
The last time enrollment in the three towns was below 800 students was somewhere around 1957, well before the regional school district was formed, according to Prowda.
That noted, Prowda noted that it is critical to remember that a projection is just a moving forward of recent trends. The key assumption is that those conditions will persist. It does not predict when the economic conditions might change, he said.
He recommends using his projections as “as starting point in local planning.”
Enrollment figures capped a 14-year growth period in 2003 with 1,169 students, Prowda said.