Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Post Script on School Enrollment

A few days ago Side posted an update on Brunswick’s School Enrollment in this item:

http://othersideofbrunswick.blogspot.com/2010/10/quick-update-brunswick-school.html

Appropos of the subject, this quote appeared in last night’s Ostrich:

Occupancy rates at the complexes differ, Schott said Friday, “with some very high and some very low,” but he said that is by design. Minus the 56 Topsham units that will be demolished, just fewer than 40 percent of the remaining 646 rentable units are occupied, he said, “which is pretty good.”

This reporter travels by the McKeen Street Navy Housing complex on a regular basis.  There are about 230 units in this development.

While a few more places are starting to look occupied, the general impression is that people have not been flooding into the available housing.

When we posted the other day, the assumption in the back of our mind was that we are 200 students below the consultants’ bottom number for this school year, at least in part, because the Navy housing was not being occupied by new families moving in.

But that assumption is apparently way off base; 40% of the rentable units are occupied! 

From where we sit, that makes the 200 student shortfall even more worrisome, because the enrollment total already includes the students in a goodly portion of the “rentable units.”

Our guess here, based on this, is that the numbers will continue to come in far below the worst case estimates of the consultants in their 2007 report.

Once again, we’re not charging for this analysis, but as we said the other day, “you get what you pay for” with consultants.

How’s that for clear ambiguity?  We’re actually pretty proud of it, in a humble sort of way.

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