THE FINAL REPORT

OF

THE BEST USES OF SCHOOLS ADVISORY TASK FORCE

A Critique of the Enrollment Projections

Davis OPEN believes that the Final Report of the Best Uses of Schools Advisory Task Force (BUSATF) is based on a certain set of enrollment projections that are twice removed from a sound study.

As we demonstrated on Thursday, March 15, at the School Board meeting, whether or not a structural deficit is awaiting our school district depends very much on the enrollment projections one chooses to rely on and the growth projects one picks to include in these projections. The very first set of enrollment projections produced by Davis Demographics & Planning with 2005 student data, which was never made public in a report, actually includes a very optimistic forecast that was never discussed in detail. We know that the Davis Demographics & Planning (DDP), the consulting company, which was hired to produce these projections in mid August (see Jeff Hudson, Davis Enterprise, August 16, 2006), had entered almost all of the relevant historical student data for the period 2001-05 by September 25. Although the BUSATF had two scheduled public meetings on October 11 and 23 and was planning on submitting its final recommendation to the Board on November 9 (see the BUSATF minutes of the meeting on September 25, 2006), the members never met in public until December 6, when DDP presented its draft report based on 2002-06 student data. The optimistic set of projections for the period 2006-12 must have been privately presented to the BUSATF, or at least some members of the group, between September 25 and December 6, but these projections were not shared with the public.

In this more than two months long period between September 25 and December 6, during which the BUSATF did not hold any public meetings, Mr. Kirk Trost, the chair of the group made conflicting comments about the decision making process of the BUSATF. On October 5, 2006, in their conversation with Mr. Trost, the President of the Board, Mr. Jim Provenza, and the Vice President, Dr. Sheila Allen, indicated their preference for creative solutions to keep Valley Oak open. Mr. Trost was careful not to make any promises and suggested that he did not “want to prejudge what the task force may decide” (see Jeff Hudson, Davis Enterprise, October 6, 2006). Four weeks later on November 2, however, Mr. Trost stated that the BUSATF’s final report “will likely be consistent with” their preliminary recommendation (Jeff Hudson, Davis Enterprise, November 3, 2006). It is very likely—but not certain—that at this point in time, Mr. Trost had seen the optimistic projections.
 

The optimistic projections, which we take the liberty of calling the “October Projections with Mobility X” because of the lack of public information on their exact nature, were most probably produced as a single set. These projections were placed in the handout that was distributed to the public at the Board meeting on January 4, 2007, with the intention of demonstrating the accuracy of DDP’s projection methods. Since the company’s forecast for the 2006 enrollments had proven to be sound—they underestimated the total K-12 enrollments by only 26 students—it made good sense to show them to the public (for their reproduction, scroll down on this page). What is interesting to note about the way in which they were placed in the handout is that there is no mobility factor assigned to them. While both the December draft report and the January presentation of the DDP included carefully labeled sets of projections (Mobility # 1, Mobility # 2, and Mobility # 3), this set lacked a label. It is quite likely that this set of projections were produced as a single set, which would be consistent with the way the DDP itself presents its standard projection methodology that seems to rely on what they referred to as Mobility # 3 (see http://www.cashnet.org/resource-center/resourcefiles/200.pdf).

Retrospectively, it seems that while the BUSATF preferred not to offer a menu of options to the Davis School Board in its final recommendation, it did ask for a menu of projections in its conversations with the DDP and also supervised, or at least witnessed quietly, the elimination of some data from the set of historical enrollment information that was available to the DDP. Mr. Greg Davis, the President of the DDP, explained in his presentation to the Board on January 4 that they produced three sets of projections with three different ways of looking at the question of mobility (Mobility # 1, 2, 3) after they received the 2006 enrollment data. At the same time, he explained that they decided to eliminate the oldest set of data available to them, the enrollments of 2001, which was apparently found to be an “odd year” (see the video record of the Board meeting on January 4, 2007). 2001 was actually not an odd year. Up to 2002, our enrollments were increasing. Thus the last yearly enrollment increase in this period had taken place from 2001 to 2002 (from 8,673 K-12 students to 8,768; see the Final Report of the BUSATF, p. 28). By eliminating the 2001 data from its enrollment studies, the DDP was able to calculate its mobility factors based on a history of three years of continuously declining enrollments (2002-05), followed by a year in which we witnessed an increase (2006). Had they included the 2001 data in their studies, they would have to have a higher mobility factor in their projections for the future because the mobility from 2001 to 2002 must have been a positive number just as the one from 2005 to 2006 proved to be. While Mr. Trost was telling to the Board on November 2 that the Davis community is “entitled to know” that the Board members “haven’t made a decision until” they have “heard all the evidence,” some of the crucial evidence, the student data for 2001, was being eliminated from the calculation of enrollment projections for the future of Davis.

The second intervention of the BUSATF into the process of the production of enrollment projections seems to have taken place between December 6 and January 4. Most probably on the request of the BUSATF, the DDP presented three sets of enrollment projections on December 6 and recommended the use of the one based on what they called “Mobility # 3,” which was the most optimistic set as far as K-12 projections for 2016 were concerned. On January 4, however, Mr. Davis explained to the Board that the group discussions with the BUSATF and the district staff made them feel that “Mobility # 2” was “perhaps a better way to go” (see the video record of the Board meeting on January 4, 2007). Not surprisingly, “Mobility # 2” was the most pessimistic option among the three sets of projections.

In short, the projections, upon which the BUSATF recommendation to close a neighborhood elementary school in Davis is based, are twice removed from that which one may call the original set of projections. The first move is the elimination of the 2001 data, which led to the dismissal of the enrollment increase from 2001 to 2002.  The second one is the arbitrary decision to prefer one assumption to another the latter of which the DDP generally uses.

Mr. Kirk Trost was incorrect in public comment at the Board Meeting on Thursday, March 15, 2007, when he suggested that the difference between the different sets of K-6 enrollment  projections, which were based on different mobility factors, is negligible. The difference in K-6 enrollment projections between the “October Projections (Mobility X)” and the January Projections (Mobility # 2) is 323 students by 2012, the last year for which Mobility X data is available – since the mobility factor used in the October projections is not public information, we call it X.

The October projections were produced for 2006-12 using 2005 data and presented to the BUSATF sometime in fall 2006 but were never made public until January 4 when the Davis Demographics & Planning included them in its PowerPoint presentation at the School Board meeting (see the images at the end of the page which we transferred from the handout of this presentation). Greg Davis, the President of DD&P, underlined the fact that these projections estimated the 2006 enrollments rather precisely (8,580 K-12 projected; 8,606 K-12 actual).

These projections are not accessible to the larger public anywhere else than at our website. We are posting a summary of the numbers below and a reproduction of the original images from the PowerPoint presentation at the end of the page. The four numbers that follow a particular year below are for K-6, 7-9, 10-12, and K-12, respectively. The numbers in parentheses are the ones in the Final Report of the Task Force (p. 19) on the basis of which the recommendation to close Valley Oak was made. We believe that the Board members should have based their final decision on the October projections since they are the only ones that were tested by time and proven to be sound. An alternative could have been to take the average of the two projections, or seek an independent review of the different sets of projections in a way that is open to the public, and not just a selected few. The majority of the Board, however, decided to trust the most pessimistic set of projections on March 19, 2007.
 

2007: 4,334 (4,276); 2,075 (2,063); 2,110 (2,147); 8,519 (8,486) 
2008: 4,368 (4,246); 2,033 (2,019); 2,136 (2,141); 8,537 (8,407) 
2009: 4,357 (4,149); 2,120 (2,075); 2,115 (2,133); 8,592 (8,357) 
2010: 4,439 (4,126); 2,105 (2,052); 2,172 (2,171); 8,716 (8,350) 
2011: 4,495 (4,193); 2,140 (2,080); 2,157 (2,151); 8,792 (8,423) 
2012: 4,513 (4,190); 2,131 (2,023); 2,261 (2,211); 8,905 (8,424).