Every MCPS Enrollment Forecast Since 2020 Has Come In Too High

This is Part 1 of Moderately MOCO’s investigation into MCPS enrollment.

Every fall, Montgomery County Public Schools publishes a forecast of how many students it will have the following year. For three straight years, MCPS forecast that enrollment would grow, and each time it fell. Last fall, MCPS forecast 155,374 students for this school year. Its preliminary count this fall was 151,967.

Moderately MOCO compared each MCPS forecast for the following fall, from the fall 2014 plan through the fall 2025 plan, with the count that followed. Before the pandemic, the forecast landed within 0.7% of the count every year, sometimes high and sometimes low. Since 2020, it has come in too high every year.

MCPS and County Council staff attribute the large misses in 2020 and 2021 to the pandemic. By 2022, the forecast was off by only 109 students against MCPS’s preliminary count. Since then the misses have grown, to 1,702 students in 2023, 1,894 in 2024 and 3,974 in 2025. This fall’s miss was 3,407.

County Council staff laid out much of this comparison first. A January memo for the council’s education committee by staff analysts Keith Levchenko and Doug Prouty tabulated every MCPS forecast since 2020 against the counts that followed, noted that the 2025 count was 3,974 students below the forecast and described “continued patterns of enrollment far below previous projections.”

Forecasts of growth, followed by declines

The last three forecasts to project growth, each measured against MCPS’s preliminary count the following fall:

• Fall 2022: forecast 162,472 for 2023, up from 161,102. The count was 160,770.
• Fall 2023: forecast 161,565 for 2024, up from 160,770. The count was 159,671.
• Fall 2024: forecast 160,515 for 2025, up from 159,671. The count was 156,541.

The fall 2024 plan also projected 162,178 students by 2030-31 and cited that outlook in keeping its building schedule. “As a result of this projected six-year growth, even with the slight slowdown, the capital projects included in the adopted CIP are warranted and must remain on their approved schedules,” it said.

The fall 2025 plan was the first in our review to forecast a drop for the following fall and to end its six years below where it started. It projected 149,706 students by 2031-32 and said, “This represents a shift in direction.” MCPS attributed the shift to falling births and “changes in the economic landscape of the region.” County Council staff called it “the first long-term enrollment projection in decades to show a decline.”

Each new plan has lowered its forecast for this fall. The fall 2020 plan expected 170,761 students, and every plan since expected fewer. This fall’s count came in below every one of those forecasts, including the most recent.

Where the misses are

One input to MCPS’s forecasts is what it calls a kindergarten capture rate, the share of county births five years earlier that turn into MCPS kindergartners. Every capital plan since fall 2020 has included a version of the same sentence: “It is anticipated that there will be a return to 87 percent kindergarten capture.” Each plan follows it by noting that falling births “will result in a decline in the kindergarten population.”

The rate was 87.2% in 2019, the highest in the table MCPS presented to the Board of Education on October 15. It was 78.7% in 2020 and between 82.6% and 84.8% from 2021 through 2025. This fall’s preliminary rate is 80.7%. The capital plan released this month still anticipates a return to 87%.

But kindergarten has not been where most of the misses came from. MCPS’s forecasts for each next kindergarten class have been off by a few hundred students or less: 392 too high for 2023, 157 too high for 2024, 101 too low for 2025 and 624 too high this fall. Most of the gap between forecast and count has been in the other grades.

MCPS tracked the birth decline for more than a decade

County births peaked at 13,843 in 2007 and were 10,858 in 2024, according to MCPS. Its capital plans noted the decline for more than a decade. In fall 2014, the plan said falling births would cause elementary enrollment to plateau, but that “in the longer term, births are projected to increase as the economy improves.” Births kept falling, to 10,858 in 2024.

In fall 2018, the plan said that over the next six years, kindergarten classes were “projected to decrease relative to Grade 12 cohorts, which will eliminate this source of enrollment growth.” It still projected total enrollment would rise to 174,322 by 2024-25. The pandemic intervened, and the state’s official count that year was 159,181.

The state’s forecasts also came in high

The Maryland Department of Planning publishes its own K-12 enrollment projections for every county each summer, starting from the previous fall’s official count, about 10 months after MCPS publishes its forecast from the same fall. Because the state projects only kindergarten through 12th grade, the figures in this section exclude pre-K.

For the past two years, the state’s forecasts for Montgomery missed by about as much as MCPS’s did. For fall 2025, both projected small gains in K-12 enrollment, and enrollment fell by about 2,800. Against the official count, MCPS’s K-12 forecast was about 2.5% too high and the state’s about 2.3%. For this fall, both were about 2% too high. In 2023 and 2024 the state’s misses were smaller than MCPS’s, and for 2022 its forecast was slightly low.

Before the pandemic, both forecasters expected growth to level off about now. MCPS’s fall 2019 plan projected a peak of 171,492 students in 2024-25 and a slight dip the next year. The state’s 2019 edition projected K-12 enrollment would peak at 164,120 in 2024 and slip to 163,490 by this fall. Both were made before the pandemic.

The state’s 2021 edition projected Montgomery would grow 7.3% over 10 years from the pandemic low of 2020, to 168,390 K-12 students by 2030. A year later it cut that outlook to 0.7% growth, which we reported in October 2022. Its August 2025 edition projected 155,410 K-12 students for that fall. The official count a few weeks later was 151,983.

The two forecasters now disagree about the long term. In its October 15 presentation, MCPS said it projects births to keep falling, while the state planning department “projects a stabilization and modest increase in births.” MCPS said it uses “a projection more aligned with recent trends for long-term facilities planning.” Its new 10-year forecast is 137,825 students by 2036-37, which MCPS says would be 27,442 below the 2019 peak.

Why it matters now

MCPS is starting a two-year study of which elementary and middle schools to close or consolidate, with community sessions beginning Monday, October 19. In a message to staff on October 15, Superintendent Thomas Taylor said MCPS has excess capacity of about 1,000 high school seats, more than 4,700 middle school seats and more than 11,000 elementary seats, according to MoCo Show.

For the 2028-29 school year, the last year covered by the fall 2022 plan, that plan projected 167,238 students. The new plan projects 149,829.

Where to weigh in

MCPS is holding community sessions on the elementary and middle school consolidation and closure study, according to its announcement. In-person sessions run from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.:

• Monday, Oct. 19: Gaithersburg Middle School, 2 Teachers Way, Gaithersburg
• Tuesday, Oct. 20: Kingsview Middle School, 18909 Kingsview Road, Germantown
• Wednesday, Oct. 21: Rosa Parks Middle School, 19200 Olney Mill Road, Olney
• Thursday, Oct. 22: A. Mario Loiederman Middle School, 12701 Goodhill Road, Silver Spring
• Wednesday, Oct. 28: Julius West Middle School, 651 Great Falls Road, Rockville
• Thursday, Oct. 29: Eastern Middle School, 300 University Boulevard East, Silver Spring

Online sessions are scheduled from noon to 1 p.m. on Oct. 19, Oct. 23, Oct. 30 and Nov. 2. A second round runs from Nov. 30 to Dec. 10. Links and details are on the study website. MCPS says no decisions have been made and any changes would not take effect until the 2029-30 school year.

Both MCPS’s forecasts and its counts are for September 30, the date the state uses for school funding and its official enrollment reports, so students who enroll later in the year are in neither number. Moderately MOCO compared each fall’s Appendix A forecast for the following fall with MCPS’s preliminary September 30 count for that fall, as published in the next year’s plan. Measured against the state’s official September 30 count instead, every forecast since 2020 was still too high: by 657 students in 2022, 2,249 in 2023, 2,384 in 2024 and 4,465 in 2025. The official count for this fall has not been released. MCPS’s totals include pre-kindergarten, Head Start and pre-kindergarten special education.

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