Student enrollment in Middletown City Schools is projected to decline in the next 10 years and could cost the district millions of dollars in state funding for its building construction plans, according to school officials.

The Ohio Facilities Construction Commission uses enrollment projections to determine whether a district is growing and awards building funds according to that projected growth. If a district’s enrollment is declining, the commission awards fewer state dollars.

In August, DeJong Healy, a subcontractor hired by the district, forecast Middletown City Schools would have 6,357 students enrolled for the 2021-2022 school year. The subcontractor arrived at the projection by taking into account several factors including live birth data, historical enrollment, community school enrollment, open enrollment, community demographics and area housing information.

But district officials are challenging DeJong Healy’s projections, saying some of the baseline student enrollment numbers used to arrive at its forecast were lower than they should have been. The enrollment count for this school year, which was taken in October, is 6,475 and the subcontractor started out with a number smaller than that.

“We submitted our numbers in August, but now we’re re-submitting numbers that we feel are more accurate,” said George Long, district business manager. “Preliminarily, we are down a little from last year. Last school year, we had a count of 6,492 students.”.

Superintendent Greg Rasmussen said the enrollment projections are extremely important because they are used to establish state funding levels for construction projects.

“We will continue to work diligently with the state to ensure they accurately reflect both current and future enrollment,” Rasmussen said.

Rick Savors, who serves as media relations manager for the newly-formed Ohio Facilities Construction Commission (OFCC), said districts haggling over enrollment numbers is pretty common.

“It’s not unusual at all. After we’ve gone through this process and have submitted enrollment numbers to each district, the district has every right to come back and say, ‘No, these numbers are dead wrong,’ ” said Savors. “Normally, after it’s all figured out, we’ll find ourselves in a pretty good environment. We usually come within 1-2 percent of our projections within two years, and within five percent when looking five years out.”

DeJong Healy projects Middletown’s enrollment for the 2021-22 school year to be 6,357, that’s 118 fewer students than they have now.

Because of a projected decline in population, the district could receive less money from the state than originally expected when it comes time for the OFCC to offer money to the district for its building purposes.

The Ohio School Facilities Commission recently merged with the State Architect’s Office to create the OFCC. The commission focuses on programmatic issues related to funding K-12 construction projects. It has the authority to approve, award and administer design, construction and other specialty contracts.

Through a series of local Facility Committee meetings held in February and March, combined with community forums that were held in March and April and student input, the Middletown focus groups decided on a location for a proposed new middle school that would replace the 89-year-old Middletown Middle School building. The group also decided where to put the new middle school, to fund improvements to Barnitz Stadium separately with private funding and to build a new competition gym as part of the high school renovation, replacing the Wade E. Miller facility.

It was first thought that state funding would be available for this construction project from the state within the next couple years. But now it looks as if those funds could take even longer to arrive.

Savors said that since the district began its building efforts with its new elementary schools, the district could receive a financial credit toward future construction plans.

“School districts could be waiting for years for that money, but I believe Middletown had expedited a local partnership plan. They did the work to develop a master plan, but then the local district goes ahead with construction using local funds only, and proceeds with some of the construction projects,” Savors said.

“When the district then becomes eligible for state funding, (a certain) amount of dollars for these new projects could be credited to them for their new construction project.”

Further discussion of the building project is expected to take place Dec. 3 when the Middletown Board of Education is expected to make a formal decision on selecting a construction manager and architectural firm for the building project.