This is a story of two different districts. On the surface, Forney and Plano Independent School Districts, both in Texas, don’t have much in common. One is managing rapid enrollment growth, while the other is navigating the complex realities of a maturing district that must make tough choices.
But both faced the same difficulty confronting districts nationwide: how to predict enrollment with accuracy in a time of school choice, declining birth rates, and a challenging housing market.
Join Zonda Education’s Rocky Gardiner and Hudson Huff, who partner with both districts to provide nuanced and accurate data, for a discussion on the trends reshaping school enrollment across the country.
Through their stories, you’ll learn how demographic data can help districts anticipate change, evaluate potential impacts, and make more informed long-term decisions.
The webinar will explore:
- The growing impact of educational choice on enrollment forecasting
- Why districts experiencing housing growth may still see lower-than-expected student yields
- The continued role housing development plays in shaping enrollment trends
- Strategies for planning amid demographic change, enrollment shifts, and facility decisions
Whether your district is expanding, stabilizing, or facing difficult consolidation decisions, this session will provide practical insights into the demographic trends shaping K-12 education and the data-driven strategies districts can use to plan confidently for the future.
Director, School District Consulting, Zonda Education
Rocky brings more than 40 years of experience in municipal planning, demographics, and educational consulting, including 20 years in regional planning in the Dallas–Fort Worth area. In 2006, he became a founding partner of a demographic consulting firm focused exclusively on public education, helping grow the company from a handful of clients to more than 100 school districts within its first decade. Throughout his career, Rocky has helped districts navigate a wide range of planning challenges, from managing rapid enrollment growth and determining future school locations to responding to changing housing markets and evolving educational trends. More recently, his work has focused on helping districts address declining enrollment and the difficult decisions surrounding school consolidation and campus closures, providing valuable insight into long-range planning and strategic decision-making.
Hudson Huff
Senior Advisor, Zonda Education
Prior to joining Zonda, Hudson spent more than 20 years in senior administrative roles for a school district in Texas. Throughout his career in public education, Hudson experienced the full spectrum of district planning challenges, from anticipating and accommodating rapid growth to managing the transition toward buildout, enrollment stabilization, and eventual enrollment decline. These experiences have provided him with a unique perspective on the evolving challenges districts face at each stage of their growth cycle and the strategies needed to support effective long-range planning and decision-making.
Education Week is serving only as the host for this presentation. The content was created by the sponsor. The opinions expressed in this webinar are those of the sponsor and do not reflect the opinion of or constitute an endorsement by Editorial Projects in Education or any of its publications.
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