What?  Estimate enrollment?

“Well, we just hope parents enroll their children.”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that in the past 20 years.

If you haven’t yet heard, “hope” is not a strategy.

It is one of the three things that last, but if you depend on it to grow your school, you’re going to be tremendously disappointed.

SchoolAdvancement.com has been publishing Enrollment Estimators since this site started, and several years ago, I began beta-testing an Enrollment Projector to estimate the next five years of a school’s enrollment.  One memorable comment came from someone who input their school’s grade-by-grade enrollment for the previous 6 years and contacted me, saying, “There’s something wrong with your calculations.  I’m getting negative numbers in the column that show enrollment 4 and 5 years into the future.”

I said there’s nothing wrong with the calculations.  If negative numbers are appearing, that’s how dire this school’s enrollment situation is, and it will be closed in four years if something isn’t done.

It felt very “Dickensian,” like a “Ghost of Christmas Future” prediction.

But for now, let’s take things one year at a time.

Please visit https://schooladvancement.com/?page_id=492

Choose the Enrollment Estimator that describes your school’s grade configuration, and download it to your computer.  Then, you can see the sample on the first worksheet of the file, test for the tool’s accuracy on the 2nd and 3rd page of the file by inputting the grade by grade enrollments as indicated, and then, on page 4, input the grade by grade enrollment for the previous 6 years to estimate your enrollment for the coming school year.

This will at least give you some basis to build your school’s budget.

If you’re not enamored with that figure, input your desired enrollment for the year in the green box, and then the tool will show you how many students you need to enroll in Kindergarten for the coming school year to make that figure a reality.

On November 15th, I’ll be posting a new article called “Happy New Year.”  Be sure to check the site that day for why I’m now considering November 15 as the start of a new year!