Isle of Wight County Schools expects to have 20-year enrollment projections by this summer.

In March, the School Board voted to retain Bethesda, Maryland-based TischlerBise as its preferred vendor to generate a “student yield analysis.” TischlerBise is the same consultant working with Isle of Wight County to project its 20-year population growth as a component of a five-year update of the county’s “Envisioning the Isle” comprehensive plan.

Deputy Superintendent Christopher Coleman told the School Board on June 12 that TischlerBise expects to have the IWCS study completed by July 31.

It will be the fourth set of projections IWCS has received since 2023.

Last year, the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center projected Isle of Wight’s enrollment would remain relatively flat through 2029, in stark contract with a spring 2023 study by Dayton, Ohio-based Cooperative Strategies, now known as Woolpert, that estimated over 1,000 new students would enroll during the buildout of more than a dozen then-proposed housing developments. The Weldon Cooper data looked only at Isle of Wight’s year-over-year enrollment to date and its birth rate, not building permits.

In late 2024, IWCS generated its own in-house projections, estimating four of its five northern-end schools would be over capacity based on state maximum class size standards if 15 active and proposed housing developments are completed and occupied. 

Some of the listed developments in the 2024 study have been stalled for over a decade. Others have seen developers return with revised proposals calling for fewer houses.

TischlerBise President Carson Bise, who made a proposal to the School Board in January, said his firm could build on the past demographic studies by coming up with a new system that would age current students through the school system, as well as take into account birth rates and new growth, to develop a 20-year public facilities plan that would identify options for new and expanded schools based on where enrollment is increasing.

The contracted work includes the firm mapping completed, in-progress and approved but unbuilt residential subdivisions and advising on where new and expanded school facilities should be built. According to an addendum to the division’s contract with TischlerBise, this work would include “locational guidance” and “siting criteria” for those hypothetical expansions.

TischlerBise’s contract with IWCS specifies a cost of $76,200. As of May 31, $16,395 of that work had been completed, including data acquisition, developing student projection methodology and mapping existing and proposed housing developments. Coleman said the scope of the entire contract was 40% complete as of June 12.

TischlerBise previously provided data for the county comprehensive plan in 2020, estimating at that time that Isle of Wight would see its population grow 0.83% annually. Differing estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau and the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center show the growth rate was closer to 2% from 2021 through 2023. The surge appears to have slowed in 2024, with Weldon Cooper’s data as of July 1 of that year showing only a half-percent increase since the same date in 2023.

Isle of Wight’s overall 6.3% increase in population since the 38,606 residents counted during the 2020 Census hasn’t so far translated to an uptick in enrollment. IWCS began the 2019-20 school year with 5,630 students enrolled as of Sept. 30, according to Virginia Department of Education data. IWCS enrollment dropped 4.1% to 5,396 students at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, rebounded to 5,629 as of Sept. 30, 2022, and again dropped 1.9% to 5,519 by the same date in 2024.

The division’s average daily membership had fallen to 5,325 as of March 31 of this year, down 1.3%, or roughly 100 students, from the same date in 2024. The ADM figure used in budgeting reflects a seven-month average in K-12 attendance, and doesn’t include preschoolers and other students for whom IWCS is responsible but may not be in a school building. The Sept. 30 figures, by comparison, are intended as a single-day snapshot.

TischlerBise Vice President Julie Herlands presented her updated countywide population findings to Isle of Wight’s Planning Commission in April that modeled three scenarios, one based on a 0.8% annual residential growth rate, one assuming 2% and the third assuming 3%.

The 0.8% model was the only one to show a net positive ratio of tax revenue versus new costs from the influx. The 2% scenario, which also assumed 1% annual increases in nonresidential growth, projected 8,752 additional housing units and 20,224 more people by 2044, both reflecting nearly 50% increases. That influx is projected to bring just over 2,000 new jobs and over $420 million in additional county revenue over the next 20 years, but also cause a need for more than $427 million in additional funding for schools, parks and other services, resulting in a net $7.2 million deficit with costs beginning to exceed revenue sometime during or after 2036.

Separately, Smithfield Town Councilman Darren Cutler has called for data on the cumulative financial impact of in-progress and proposed housing developments within the town’s limits. The Town Council voted on June 3 to approve Cutler’s request for what he termed a “growth rate study” that would provide a town-specific cost-benefit analysis. 

The School Board discussed the possibility of holding a joint meeting with county and town officials once each governing body’s respective studies are complete.

All three are now “generally moving in the right direction” on “growth and how it’s going to impact the schools,” School Board Chairman Jason Maresh said.