Will Baby ‘Boomlet’ Factor In

Newtown Student Enrollment Trends?

By John Voket

At least one member of Newtown’s Board of Finance has dismissed the notion that a so-called “baby boomlet” will have any measurable impact on down-trending student enrollment locally.

About 20 minutes before the close of this week’s finance board meeting, during which a recommendation was passed to reduce the school district’s requested budget increase by $2.5 million, Vice Chairman James Gaston expressed concern that a suggestion to consider closing an elementary school as a cost-cutting measure might be unwise.

“As far as enrollment goes, we’re planning the budget for next year,” Mr Gaston said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen in 2013 or 2014. But in 2007, I was reading in The New York Times that in 2007, there was a significant increase in the birth rate. Well, in 2013 those kids are coming...the question is are we going to be ready?”

To that, board member Michael Portnoy countered, “As a point of clarification, the increase in birth rates are from the underprivileged and immigrants, Hispanic populations, etcetera. I don’t know that we’ve got an influx into Newtown of those types of people.”

That brief interaction between two longtime finance board members may have reignited a significant point of contention in Newtown’s struggle to balance current financial realities against scientific and demographic projections that even Mr Gaston has previously acknowledged become points of “conjecture” more than a year or two into the future.

The Times article which Mr Gaston referred to was also circulated at an earlier meeting by resident Ruby Johnson, who also referred to an excerpt when she advocated on behalf of supporting the current school budget increase as proposed. The report stated that changing demographics are being driven largely by immigration and higher birthrates among the foreign born.

While immigrants account for 13 percent of the population, the share of recent births to foreign-born mothers rose to 20 percent.

Kenneth M. Johnson, senior demographer at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, is also quoted in the Times report as saying more that two-thirds of the growth of the Hispanic population last year came from births, not immigration.

A 2009 report produced by Connecticut Voices for Children (CVC), a political advocacy nonprofit, reported that Hispanics represent the largest minority group within the nation and the state of Connecticut. As of 2007, 11.5 percent of Connecticut residents were Hispanic.

The CVC report goes on to say that more than 92,000 Hispanic students are currently enrolled in Connecticut public schools, that Hispanic students represent more than 16 percent of the overall student population, and are the largest represented minority group in Connecticut schools today.

An analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center indicates that as of 2007, Connecticut’s Hispanic population stood at 411,000, but also pointed out that the median age among that population was 28. Breaking out numbers in Fairfield County, the overall Hispanic population increased from 104,835 in 2000, to 133,198 in 2007 — a 27 percent increase.

The US Census bureau’s overall projections for Connecticut in 2030 indicate the population will top out at 3,688,630, an increase of 283,065 from the actual figures reported in 2000.

As the finance board’s budget recommendation moves to the Legislative Council for further deliberation before a final proposal is turned over to taxpayers in the annual April referendum, the issue of student enrollment trends and whether to hedge against possible and sudden student population increases will likely remain a topic of discussion for Newtown’s budgetmakers.