Jersey City Public Schools Demographic Study

As development activity accelerated in the Jersey City, Jersey City Public Schools commissioned Urbanomics in partnership with Perkins Eastman to prepare a 5-year demographic study, capacity analysis and redistricting plan to distribute future growth across the City for use in updating the District's 2012 Long Range Facilities Plan.

Our staff projected enrollment over a 5-year period for the District and each of its 38 schools for all grade levels including PreK to 12 and self-contained special education students based upon historic enrollment trends and birth rates using the NJDOE's Cohort-Survival Enrollment Projection Worksheet. The results of the forecasts were geocoded and overlaid with the pre-existing district boundaries. The impact of current and future development activity was geospatially illustrated by location and unit counts from 2012 to the 2017 before applying school child multipliers prepared by Rutgers University to enrollment forecasts. Based on a survey and assessment of physical space capacity prepared by Perkins Eastman, Urbanomics recommended appropriate modifications to attendance zone boundaries and developed a redistricting plan.

Urbanomics' forecasts projected the current development boom would lead enrollment in the Jersey City public school district to increase by 25 percent over a 5-year period if current trends continued unabated with the majority of gains among students in grades K through 5. Our study recommended the development of new pre-K facility space to meet current demand and identified areas of over-capacity to assist the District with making decisions relative to capital construction and facility space leases, purchases and reconfigurations.