School Board Releases New BOCES Numbers for Chap Crossing Enrollment Projections

The Chappaqua Central School District Board of Education sent a letter to the New Castle Town Board today with new projected enrollment numbers for Chappaqua Crossing.

In the letter, the district talks about new numbers published by Western Suffolk BOCES, which did an earlier demographics study for the board in September 2009, in response to a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) that was done for an earlier version of the proposal.

Both the school board's newest findings and the 2009 study are attached to this article as PDF files.

Enrollment Methodology

BOCES was asked to take another look at its earlier findings, said board member Gregg Bresner. The came up with a number of 166 new students being added assuming the 199 housing units proposed in Alternative I, which is the latest version of the proposal. It was submitted to the Town Board as part of a final environmental impact statement (FEIS) that was delivered in July. It also did a run down of the main scenario, dubbed the Proposed Action, that owner Summit/Greenfield desire, and was studied in the both a 2009 draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) and this year's FEIS. In its findings, BOCES came up with a number of 214 new students. The Proposed Action, however, has more housing units; 278 in total.

The methodology that BOCES used this time was different than the last analysis, Bresner explained. In the 2009 report, BOCES examined five different enrollment scenarios. Two of them - known as Scenario II and Scenario V - were considered for the new study. Scenario II looked at the number of students who would move into the development, and it envisioned there being no age restriction limiting occupancy to adults over 55 with children over 18 - the limit was later dropped by Summit/Greenfield. The number that was found was 61 new students.

In addition to looking at new students who could come from the development, Scenario V looked at the number of students that would enroll as a result of people in the district selling their existing homes and moving into Chappaqua Crossing, with new kids being part of the families that would buy them. That scenario was measured both with and without an age restriction, while the non-restricted number being 214.

For its new study, BOCES took the numbers for both scenarios and added them together, Bresner said. From that subtotal, BOCES then subtracted students who would be moving within the district as a result of the development. They came out with a number of 214 students - a coincidental number from Scenario V, Bresner said - under the proposed action, and with 166 under Alternative I.

Findings from BOCES were also used recently in the New Caslte Town Board's chosen enrollment study. In it, Paul DeMay of FACTS Presentation Services used Scenario II and updated its number for Alternative I, coming to a figure of 44 students. He took that number and averaged it with other enrollment projections - including that of Summit/Greenfield, which projects 58 students under Alternative I - and his own findings of 41 students. He utlimately arrived at an average of 44 projected new students.

Fiscal Impact

The school board also announced numbers from BOCES that looked at the fiscal costs of Chappaqua Crossing to the district. Bresner explained that numbers were arrived at by taking the 2008 "break even" cost per student - which is about $25,000 - and multiply it by the new number of students. It looked at both a non-age restricted proposed action and Alternative I for its findings. The former showed a cost of $4,115,940, while the later projected $2,776,436. BOCES then looked at the impact in the year 2015, with a higher cost - the FEIS uses a 2008-2015 timeable for looking at fiscal impacts - and the numbers were $6,199,519 for the former and $4,166,867 for the later.

Interest In Looking At More Factors In District's Profile

Board members also wrote that they want to look into other factors that they feel could impact the district, such as desireability of the school system, the fact that Chappaqua Crossing's units would be newer than comparable developments and the difference in taxes between condominiums and non-condomiumum residential buildings. As a result, the board's legal counsel - Keane & Beane - is contracting out with experts in the field to look at the situation in another study.