Student enrollment projections were provided in a presentation during a recent Saugus Union School District governing board meeting and findings showed that in 2025 the district saw the lowest kindergarten student enrollment in recent years.
According to the presentation given by David Kaitz from Davis Demographics the Saugus district had 906 kindergarten students enroll for the 2025-26 school year, which is a new low in recent years, but student population is expected to increase over the next few years.
The methodology used to measure student population predictions over the past 35 years has been done in a three-pillar process, which includes birth factors, mobility factors, and student field factors.
To gather that information, Davis Demographics developed a spatial and tabular data setup for the district, researched active residential development projects, analyzed demographics of the district and attendance areas, and developed resident forecasts by grade and attendance area.
According to the presentation, as of fall 2025 the highest student density within the Saugus district perimeters were found near West Creek Academy, in between Plum Canyon Elementary School and Skyblue Mesa Elementary School, and also in the Rio Vista Elementary School area.
For the historic and projected births by ZIP code, Kaitz noted during the presentation that the ones highlighted were the more predominant ones within the district, but may not be exact and “it’s the lowest level of data we’ve been able to gather,” he said.
For the 2025-26 school year, there were 906 students enrolled into the kindergarten cohort, which was the smallest in recent years. In 2024-25 there were 1,015 kindergarten students enrolled into the district and in 2023-34 there were 1,021.
“A lot of districts have been declining. Currently this year, it did drop in numbers but you’re going to get back in some years in the future,” Kaitz said.
According to the presentation, kindergarten enrollment is expected to increase for the 2026-27 and 2027-28 school years to over 1,000 students before it drops again to about 985 students for the 2028-29 school year.
For mobility factors, “we want to see what happens as the students progress through the grades. In this case, kindergarten to first, first to second, second to third and so on. We have four years of data,” Kaitz said. Among those four years, the changes are noted and averaged.
What the mobility factors help with is giving a general idea of what’s happening in housing resales. If the Saugus district were to have students past sixth grade, officials would be able to determine how students are transferring in and out of private schools.
Overall mobility is high and the district is seeing more gain than loss, according to Kaitz.
“People want to move into your district for many different reasons, but in comparison to doing this from last year and the year before the mobility is down a little bit. But again these are very high so it’s very positive for your district,” he added.
According to the presentation, there are an estimated 11,352 children ages 4 to 11 within the district’s boundaries. Resident student enrollment for the 2025-26 school year in the district was reported at 8,593, or 76%. Nonresident transfers were recorded at 521 students, which is the highest number over the past seven years.
With the new residential developments in the area, student yield factors help determine the forecasted number of students enrolling into the district and coming from new residential developments.
The district can expect a gain of 18 students for every 100 new condominiums or townhomes. According to the data, the Bridgeport Elementary School area will see the largest growth in student enrollments.
Kaits noted that the trends the Saugus district is seeing don’t represent an isolated challenge but rather a state and nationwide issue.
Overall, the Saugus district is still projected to increase by 276 resident TK-6 students over the next seven years, a growth rate of 3%, assuming all local residential projects follow through. If some are delayed or pushed out, then the district can expect a student enrollment growth of about 175 TK-6 students.
Other areas that are forecasted to grow in student population include the Emblem Academy Elementary School boundary and West Creek Academy boundary, according to the presentation.
