Newton saw a steeper decline in enrollment this school year than forecast. But at the same time, students seem to be coming back to NPS from private schools, especially Newton North students.

Katie Hogue, chief of data and research for NPS, on Wednesday night presented the School Committee with findings that show a continuing trend of declining enrollment in Newton schools.

Last year, after a similar report showed a decline in enrollment exacerbated by COVID-19 and a migration to private schools, Superintendent Anna Nolin spoke with families across the district to try to figure out why they had left NPS. Some said the classes weren’t challenging enough. Others said the classes were too crowded. And a major theme was a loss of trust in the schools.

Indeed, as of Oct. 1, NPS saw a decline of 159 students overall, a loss of 61 students more than projected.

But since October, Superintendent Nolin said, there’s been a major shift at the high school level. A hundred students have transferred back into Newton North High School. And 41 of those students returned from private schools. Others include international students who left the country and came back and students who moved to other public school districts and then moved back to Newton.

“At South, we are up 128 transfers since the start of school,” Nolin said. “We had three students go out to private school and 19 come back in. Of the 257 students who have, at some point in their time at South, been in private school, 110 of them have re-enrolled in NPS in high school. So that is a slightly different trend than we were looking at a couple years ago.”

Hogue said the projections show a continuing decline in overall enrollment for the next few years, followed by a stabilization.

Some of that stabilization will come with new housing developments, she added. NPS works closely with the city’s Planning Department to keep updated on how many units are coming, how many bedrooms, and when.

And there are multiple large apartment complexes set to open for occupancy in the next couple of years—more than 2,500 housing units combined—which will bring more kids.

“So for this report, students are being added from 18 residential developments over the five years, which results in an addition of 544 students over the five-year projection, from these developments,” Hogue said.

Each year, the district creates a report on enrollment and enrollment projections—and those projections are adjusted each year as needed—to help with planning for both the short- and long-term when it comes to staffing, budgeting and building needs. Projections for kindergarten enrollment also factor in the number of births in the city five years prior.

You can watch the entire presentation online.