This Opinion Piece by Denise Provost was published in the Somerville Journal in March 2003:
All plans for the future are based on predictions of some sort. Yet all predictions have their limitations; their value depends on the soundness of the underlying data, and the methods for drawing conclusions from that data. Whenever the city is to rely on predictions made by others, it is prudent to question the validity of the data supplied and methodology used for any recommended decisions.
In evaluating the NESDEC study, it is instructive to make comparisons with a study completed around 1982, when the Trade School, then at the Edgerley School, was being combined with Somerville High School on Central Hill. Proposition 2 1/2 had been enacted in 1980, imposing fiscal constraints on Somerville even more daunting than those faced today. Yet the consolidation was not made for fiscal reasons, but to improve the quality of education for Trade School students.
Somerville invested almost $30 million to renovate and expand the High School - even with state reimbursement, Somerville's share was about $3 million. With so much at stake, projected enrollment for the new, combined high school was a crucial question. To answer that question, the city hired a consultant, Dr. George Collins.
Using population forecasts prepared by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), Dr. Collins predicted high school enrollment leveling off at about 1,600. His prediction came close, but the 1980 MAPC projection of 71,800 Somerville residents in 2000 was an underestimate: the census count for Somerville in 2000 was 77,478. Today we are experiencing crowded conditions at Somerville High School, with more than 1,800 students, and Superintendent Argenziano has spoken publicly of the need to enlarge the High School, or to build a second one.
Now, once again, Somerville has hired a consultant to provide data as the basis for a facilities plan. It is crucial to ask ourselves, “How reliable are NESDEC's predictions?” In this budget climate, we can be certain that the NESDEC study will be used to justify school closures and the sale of irreplaceable real estate.
Oddly, the report which NESDEC offers as the basis for long-range facilities plan neither makes nor relies upon population projections. NESDEC's study includes only Somerville's current school enrollment, adjusted up through the grades for its historic rate of attrition. The only population growth that NESDEC considers is the number of births last year to Somerville families; it then assumes that in 5 years, 35% of these children (based on historic trends) will enroll in public school kindergartens and move up through the grades, with the usual rate of attrition.
There is nothing in NESDEC's methodology that allows for any dynamic of growth. NESDEC predicts flat school enrollments because it limits its school population assumption to those now in school, plus 35% of the 2002 births to families living in Somerville. Although NESDEC reports that the city's population increase of 1,268 residents during the decade from 1990 to 2000 represents a 1.7% increase, it does not even apply that modest growth rate to its enrollment assumptions.
“Ordinarily, we only do 5 year predictions [of enrollment],” Dr. Edward Gotgart of NESDEC told me. He stated that the Somerville enrollment projections “for '08 on out” were “very squishy, because those children haven't even been born yet.” When I asked why NESDEC didn't look at a community's population projections, he told me that NESDEC didn't “have anything like the data MAPC has.”
Yet NESDEC doesn't need MAPC's data, it can simply use MAPC's population projections, just as Dr. Collins did two decades ago. MAPC, in its December 2002 draft population projections, sees Somerville's population rising to 83,280 by 2010, a growth rate of almost 7.5%. Somerville's Office of Housing and Community Development (OHCD) thinks these numbers are too low - on January 16, it asked MAPC to revise the city's population projection upward, to 88,722 by 2010 - an increase of 14.5%.
Even if one accepts MAPC's more conservative growth figure, Somerville faces a significant climb in population during the decade ahead. Such population growth must impact school enrollments. It is shocking to me that NESDEC's $24,500.00 "study" does not take into account either the city's or MAPC's population projections. If we begin to close and dispose of schools based on NESDEC's report, we risk shortchanging our future.
We know of other examples of Somerville selling its buildings cheap and renting them back dearly. The Western Junior High School and the Pope School are two cases where the city has paid many times over in rent what the purchasers of these properties paid to acquire them from the city, contributing significantly to our current budget woes. Before we risk disposing of more city buildings we may not be able to afford to rent back space in later - let alone replace - we should be reasonably certain that we will not need them any time soon.
While there are some interesting observations about our school system in the NESDEC study, I'm sure we can all see that it is not a plan, nor does it purport to be a plan. It is flawed by a few other serious errors, such as its assumption that the new Lincoln Park School will be built by 2005. It suggests no "options" for our schools not already under discussion. Yet we do need a long range plan for our schools - and soon.
I would urge that such a plan must start from our vision as a community of how we want to educate our young. Enrollment and dollar projections have their place, but our starting point should be elsewhere: identifying the successes of our current system, so we can build on them; looking at the successes of others, so that we might emulate them; learning what families in this city are looking for in their schools, so that we might provide them.
Prosperity is cyclical, and we will always face some fiscal constraints. We must make plans based on our vision of what we want from our school system in order to get any of what we want. If we plan from assumptions of scarcity and decline, those are the outcomes we will achieve. Overlaid on a future of burgeoning population growth, these assumptions could spell disaster.
copyright 2003 Denise Provost